[BTS] Help and advice with progress

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?

If BUG is auto-enabled then you have installed that correctly in Custom Assets. BULL assets are copied into custom assets - as I had mentioned, explicit instructions are in a txt file included in the zip. The BULL DLL file is copied to the BTS/Assets folder to replace the vanilla DLL, but DO NOT DELETE THE ORIGINAL DLL. Just rename the original dll by adding an extension like ".original" to the end to disable it.

I'm not too keen on Sulla's let's play video above. That was a long time ago and there are some misleading habits there. What you are doing now is fine.
 
I'll ask a third time - did you restart your game with the new save I provided?

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?

Dankok basically provided the answer I was looking for here. You need to be aware of the tiles your city is working about make sure it is working the right stuff. Wash clearly was not. This is called micro and it is a good idea to check your cities each turn for now, especially early.

Related, city overlap is a good thing. You will often find yourself overlap cities especially with the cap to share tiles, resources and especially cottages to keep them growing. As someone mentioned, cottages only grow if a citizen is working it.

So on that note, you can switch tiles between cities that share BFC (Big Fat Cross) tiles. Great way to make sure you are working best tiles between cities. Once you settle next city 1NW of cows you have a great example of this as both Wash and that city can share cottaged flood plains. New York, again I don't care much for this city, has not much to share here.

Roading the wheat here was bad and far from what I was looking for. Hooking up wheat is far from an urgent endeavor for health. You are Expansive anyway.

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).

That city should already be settled
3. Sent another worker to mine the hills near Washington.
That mine is faaaaaar from important right now..you should have been chopping
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.
Worried about Izzy? Why? She is no threat to you for a long time. Barbs will be a problem before she ever will be. Send your warrior out now

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?
I'd admit this is a strange looking connection but your cities appear to be connected by river now by virtue of OB with Izzy
2. How should I be thinking of tech researching queue now?
Why are you teching HBR? I missed this somehow. You actually have beakers into it. What does HBR do for you? (Hint: Read the Civlopedia)

Myst should have come before Masonry. It's a prereq with Mining so it applies a bonus to the tech, but also might as well for Monuments since you are Charismatic.

I'd probably go Maths or Alpha at this stage. You can kill Izzy with Axes if you wish. (And I would wish :) )
3. What about religion at this stage - I have not seen it mentioned so far.
Then that means we are not concerned about it ;) Izzy will infect you soon enough:jesus:

You did not switch to Slavery when your first settler popped.

Another note: You settled NY quite some time ago (Again, I city I do not like). You have 3 workers, yet still no worker has given attention to this city.

Honestly, I would at least replay 10 turns here. Replay is not bad while learning. If your answer to my question is that you did not restart the game with my save, then you should restart this game instead.
 
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Ok @lymond. I have installed re-installed BULL mod as per the instruction. What feature will tell me it's a successful BULL installation?

Yes, I am using the Noble save you posted. I will replay from start again, based on your advice.

Quick question on gameplay: say the system pops a message asking which tech to research next, I can't seem to click the map area to investigate how many turns my worker builds till completion before I decide what tech to research.
 
Roading the wheat here was bad and far from what I was looking for. Hooking up wheat is far from an urgent endeavor for health. You are Expansive anyway.
I'm a little confused here. Do you mean to say that roading the Wheat will only provide Health benefits and nothing else, and that I should make sure I have Citizen actively working on this tile.

Myst should have come before Masonry. It's a prereq with Mining so it applies a bonus to the tech, but also might as well for Monuments since you are Charismatic.
I lost you there. Do you mean to say that I could go Mysticism > Masonry? I'm playing Roosevelt, who is not charismatic.

You did not switch to Slavery when your first settler popped.
Why? I don't understand the logic.
 
Pic
Spoiler :
wash-jpg.564829
For settler & worker builds food = hammers, so a floodplains cottage gives as much production as the forest.
By switching tiles you can gain commerce (those 2 coins next to food), and progress your cottage (they mature only when worked).

When you click on city center tiles your governor will auto-assign tiles, and would switch to cottage in this case.
They are not always doing this right (actually famous for doing silly things :)), but they will use better tiles if it's very obvious.

I had my mouse over sheep in the upper right corner, where your connected resources are listed.
Roading wheat results in it also appearing there, giving your city more health.
You can see health status just above the window explaining what sheep does in my screenie.
Currently you have 8 positive health effects combined, and 6 negative. We can say your city does fine there for now, so what Lymond means is that you can do more important things with your workers first.

Overall city screens hold the most important info in every Civ game, so it's very recommended that you hover your mouse over everything and check things out.
Working wheat gives you 4 food and 1 hammer, but not the health bonus (which will be permanently enabled after roads).

You can also learn more about total production and where it's coming from by hovering over 6+5 (left of the settler production bar near the top left corner).
Play around with tiles, change them and look at how your numbers change.
 

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Quick question on gameplay: say the system pops a message asking which tech to research next, I can't seem to click the map area to investigate how many turns my worker builds till completion before I decide what tech to research.
There's a setting in the options to "minimize pop-ups", I believe, which will give you the chance to give orders to idle units before the game bombards you with tech and city builds, if you prefer. That said you can freely switch what you're researching at any time, just go to the tech screen and click on the tech you want to research, or click on the research progress bar on the map screen and select a new tech from the options you have. If the tech choice pop-up shows up and you have to do something before the start of the turn to decide, just click on something, do whatever you need to do, and than change the tech you're researching to what you want to research. Just remember to actually change it, because the game will pick for you if you don't, and two half-finished techs don't do as much for you as one completed one.

I'm a little confused here. Do you mean to say that roading the Wheat will only provide Health benefits and nothing else, and that I should make sure I have Citizen actively working on this tile.
Putting a farm on the Wheat is what improves the wheat's tile yield, which is extremely important as it turns a 2:food: tile into a 4:food: tile, or even a 5:food: tile if the Wheat was irrigated (this one won't be until you research Civil Service, but we'll get into the nitty-gritty of irrigation chains later). Food is critical for every city, as food is what allows it to grow. You always want to be working your food tiles, since you always want your cities to be growing. Of course there's exceptions to that, but we'll get into those details when they come up. For right now, work your food.

Putting a road on the Wheat connects the Wheat resource to your trade network, which gives +1:health: to your city. However, look at the health bar in the city screen, next to the food bin: 8:health: to 6:yuck:. You really don't benefit from the +1:health: at all. Having the Wheat roaded will be important later, but only later. Right now tile improvements are more important, so you should focus on that first.

I lost you there. Do you mean to say that I could go Mysticism > Masonry? I'm playing Roosevelt, who is not charismatic.
If you're not CHA there's less reason to go Mysticism (through being IND does allow for other opportunities in it's own right), but it can still be an important tech for early border pops. As for why Mysticism before Masonry, every prerequisite of a tech that you own makes that tech cheaper to research. If you're going Masonry and Mysticism anyway it's more efficient to go Mysticism first, since it'll make Masonry cheaper.

Why? I don't understand the logic.
When you change civics (or state religion) and you're not SPI your empire goes into Anarchy for one or multiple turns, depending on a few factors, but this early on on Normal speed it'll always be one turn. While in anarchy no city produces anything, nothing grows, nothing gets done, it's basically a stagnant turn. The only thing you can do while in Anarchy is move units, so workers can build improvements and other units can move to do wherever. It's generally optimal to switch into Slavery after your first Settler is done, assuming you don't wish to whip said settler, because you don't lose anything while that settler is still on the map and moving to where it wants to settle. If you switch after it puts down the city than the turn of Anarchy will stagnate that city's growth, production and commerce output for an entire turn as well as your capitol, which is obviously less than ideal.
 
Ok, I replayed from Turn 0 as I applied all the knowledge accumulated so far.

Progress

1. Third settler is east bound towards my third city.
2. I plan to settle third city 1SW of Horse resource
3. I plan to whip the Granary once the pop in Washington grows to size 3 in 4 turns.

About the question of choosing tile for citizen to work on, there is a tile with more Hammer and I want my unit to finish building faster, when I click on a tile with more Hammers (red circle on pic below), the unit build time cut in half at the expense of city growth of just 2 turns. Seems logical that I should select this tile for my citizen to work on (even though it's not an improved tile), no?

Spoiler City Screen - Which tile to work on? :
city-screen-1960bc-png.564841
 

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SPI is short for Spiritual, one of the leader traits. Like how Roosevelt is IND/ORG, Industrious/Organized.
 
A couple of random thoughts.

I tend to play a 'learning' game where I'm thinking really hard about what I'm doing and trying to improve alongside some much more casual games at the same time so it doesn't start to feel too much like hard work.

If you want to play more than one game at a time, you can make a copy of your current autosave and quick save game folder found (within My Documents/Civilization IV Beyond the Sword/Saves/Single) and start a new game. When ready to resume your original game, you can then restore the autosave folders to their original location first making sure to make separate copies of the current autosave. N.B. If you start a new game without copying the autosave folder elsewhere, the game will overwrite your existing autosaves.

Another thing I find useful for learning is changing the autosave interval to every turn and maximum number of saves to 500. This way if I have spent ages optimising my cities over 3 turns and misclick at the end of the third turn I don't have to redo the whole lot. To change the settings:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/where-to-change-auto-save-interval.400303/
 
First, I'd make a general recommendation here to stop when important decision need to be made such as where to settle. It's better to do this before...say..moving a settler off into neverland.

I encourage you to start thinking more about what your workers are doing in relation to what a city or cities can reasonable work. Chopping is initially more important that improving every tile in the BFC. Those grass cottages are not important right now and a waste of early worker turns.. Improvements that can't be worked for a long time are not important.
Furthermore, the sheep should already be improved way before all those cottages.

I will expand a bit on a point I discussed recently regarding tile shariing. Note the following screen:

Spoiler tile share :
KQSWWcL.jpg


I've placed a blue X on the tiles that Wash and NY can share. (includes tile with settler on it now) The point here is that if you are going to cottage, cottaging these tiles first is best as the cities can share those tiles to keep cottages growing such as when they whip citizens. It also helps you manage workers better


Granary in Wash is less important at this stage. Focus is on expansion - workers/settlers - and a few warriors for spawnbusting.

Again, I don't like new cities building a worker first. Build a warrior or start a granary if Pottery tech is in.

Your hammers come from whips, chops and OF at this stage - so no - the unimproved forest hill has no value. Again, keep in mind that a citizen is worth 30:hammers:..think about that.

Always improve a city's best tiles first..namely food. Wash should have wheat and sheep improved as soon as possible. A worker should be ready immediately to start improving the cow in NY which is its best tile. That takes precedence over cottages, as does chopping settlers.

City#3 is still too slow out of the gate.

Warrior in far West is too far. Again, scout initial radius around cap for city spots...no more than 10 tiles in one direction, then spawnbust. More scouting can be done later on.

I again remind you to get in the habit of going 0% or 100% research slider. Accumulate just enough gold to fund the next tech. Do not run X%.

So it really boils down as you learn here to practice and get accustom to what things take priority early. It will take time for you to get comfortable with these concepts, but it will come. Just take things slowly.

Oh..and I would settle new city on the Wine. This city can share the wheat with Washington and work the copper. Nice early productive city that is close to Wash. Eventually get Deer too.
(Note: another reason for keeping a compact empire is that distance from capital maintenance is a thing...far away cities cost more)

Basically, my plan here would be to get up the two nearby productive cities mentioned asap, improve copper, take Madrid. Surrounding land you have is not particular good. I normally don't like to focus early war with learner games, but sometimes it is just the better thing to do in some situations.
 
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@5tephen

Wow I had no idea you could change the autosave interval. That will be incredibly useful for me.
Yeah, it's fairly common knowledge among folks who play GOTM, HOF, or SGOTM games as it is basically required for crash exceptions
 
About the video I posted above: Sullla goes through some of the basic mechanics in the game early on, which I figured could be useful here. Sure, perhaps he doesn't play perfectly and abuses the AI to the n-th degree, but I don't think videos need to be on @Lain's level for people to learn stuff from them. If there are other videos or articles that explain the basics better, then those would be more recommended I suppose. I tried to look into the War Academy, but just about everything is very old, and deals with different things really.

Of course, you get fantastic help here, so by all means keep writing here and playing on the side. It's the best way to learn. It's just that I'm seeing some pretty advanced stuff being bandied about, which is nice, but really not needed to beat the AI at Chieftain or Noble. And may be a little confusing. I still recall from when I started playing, posted in threads like this, and got overwhelmed with high-level stuff that I wasn't able to take on board yet.

Anyway, best of luck. Keep at it, and you'll be smacking the AI around in no time :)
 
Yeah, it's fairly common knowledge among folks who play GOTM, HOF, or SGOTM games as it is basically required for crash exceptions
Yep, very useful as a backup (thankfully I've never had to use it), and it's then possible to go back a few turns to check on something (like the barb galley thing in my game). 500 autosaves seems a little excessive though! :scared: They do take up space, especially in the late game, and that many seems like a waste. 10 saves every turn seems fine to me. Obviously do what you prefer, tho.

Looking up-thread again, I fully agree the sheep should have been improved by now. Get into the habit of thinking about Food like a Diamond Ring or something. You want to wear that thing, or err... improve it instantly.
 
I read all of your advice with special care (thank you again). I then went back and re-play (again), incorporating the oft-repeated advice to concentrate on FOOD and GROWTH, while paying attention to micromanagement of individual cities. I am slowly getting it.

Wow, I feel better now, even though it took me so many repeated attempts to replay the turns - 3 cities at 2120BC. I'm quite delighted.
 

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Wow, I feel better now, even though it took me so many repeated attempts to replay the turns - 3 cities at 2120BC. I'm quite delighted.

Don't be discouraged to repeat turnsets if you feel like it. It is easily the fastest way to learn since you get to feel the difference first hand.
 
I will wait for further input.

In the mean time, I have a few questions. Just wanna make sure I grasp the important concepts behind the play.

1. How did you come up with the decision to settle on top of the wine resource tile on West Coast - instead of say the one 1N of wine tile? My surmise is that the BFG covers more food tile with the city built on the wine resource?
2. How do you know which tiles are shareable with a neighboring city? Is there a rule/formula that governs this?
3. I am building a granary in my West Coast city (New York) - is this a correct move?
4. I can't seem to improve the tiles surrounding New York with Farm? How do I increase food yield for this city?
5. I realize I can't seem to keep up with tile improvement with Washington keeps growing in pop. I should be anticipating this better?
 

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I will wait for further input.

In the mean time, I have a few questions. Just wanna make sure I grasp the important concepts behind the play.

1. How did you come up with the decision to settle on top of the wine resource tile on West Coast - instead of say the one 1N of wine tile? My surmise is that the BFG covers more food tile with the city built on the wine resource?
I'm not entirely sure of the thinking, but on the wine means the copper is in New York's BFC and the city is on a plains hill giving it an extra :hammers: in the city center tile. But you also need a boarder pop to be able to work the deer.
2. How do you know which tiles are shareable with a neighboring city? Is there a rule/formula that governs this?
Every city has a Big Fat Cross (BFC) consisting of the city center tile, the eight tiles that boarder the city center, and the twelve tiles that boarder those tiles. (Another way of thinking of this is to imagine a 5x5 square with the corners knocked out.) If a tile is in the BFC of more than one city, it can be shared by the cities. (Only one city may work it at a time.) The BUG mod includes the ability to mark the map with BFCs to help the player plan where to place cities.
3. I am building a granary in my West Coast city (New York) - is this a correct move?
I'll let better players than me answer this one.
4. I can't seem to improve the tiles surrounding New York with Farm? How do I increase food yield for this city?
Before discovering Biology, you can only place farms on irrigated grassland and plains tiles and farming resource tiles (and tundra next to fresh water.) Before discovering Civil Service, only tiles next to fresh water (lakes and rivers) can be irrigated. So you can only place farms on farming specials and grassland, plains, and tundra next to rivers and lakes. To improve the food yield in New York, you either need to get a boarder pop so you can work the deer (and place a camp on the deer) or discover Civil Service so you can chain irrigate to the green tiles nearto New York.
5. I realize I can't seem to keep up with tile improvement with Washington keeps growing in pop. I should be anticipating this better?
Or build more workers.
 
Every city has a Big Fat Cross (BFC) consisting of the city center tile, the eight tiles that boarder the city center, and the twelve tiles that boarder those tiles. (Another way of thinking of this is to imagine a 5x5 square with the corners knocked out.) If a tile is in the BFC of more than one city, it can be shared by the cities. (Only one city may work it at a time.) The BUG mod includes the ability to mark the map with BFCs to help the player plan where to place cities.

So this imaginary 5x5 is also applicable to a city with only 1 city population, as far as sharing tile is concerned? My guess is that the answer is YES, as I can see my Boston utilizing a tile from Washington (beyond the 3x3 area).
 
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