[BTS] Help and advice with progress

[Fippy]

For a standard Burcap all floodplains & green tiles are cottaged
River plains can be fine (if you have good enuf food), non-river plains should be ignored.
So most players would have no improvements 2s and 2s1w.

Most eye-catching is too many floodplains farms.
Farm 1n also pointless, with floodplains available you should never farm green tiles (as general rule, there can be exceptions ).

 

[elitetroops]

Representation is mostly the best option because it usually solves most of your happiness issues without needing to build any units and it gives +3/specialist. With Rep a scientist specialist produces 6/turn, making it better than most tiles you can work. If you pair it with Caste you can run unlimited scientist specialists in all cities. Usually you pair it with Pacifism to produce more Great Scientists, because bulbing with those is the fastest way to tech in the early/mid game.

Someone mentioned Liberalism earlier, which requires Education and Philosophy as prereqs. The reason a Lib beeline is so strong is that both of those techs can be bulbed. Once you reach Writing you build a library somewhere and start running two scientists. This produces a great scientist that can be used to bulb Philosophy as soon as you have CoL and Meditation. Philo unlocks pacifism, which doubles the rate you produce great people and you can get out two more Great Scientists in two cities to bulb education. Those two techs were basically free. Then instead of teching an expensive tech like Rifling, you can tech much cheaper Liberalism and pick Rifling for free. On higher levels it also has the advantage that the AI will not tech Philo for a very long time if the religion is already founded, they will also take a long time to get to Education, so you will get a lot of trade value from both of those techs once Lib is secured.

In this game Great Scientists would bulb education next, which doesn't help you at all. Therefore pacifism for more great people is not necessarily the best option.

About the >750/turn test, I forgot to mention I also used Mercantilism. Merc gives one free specialist/city. With Rep that's an instant 90 raw beakers/turn as long as you make sure those free specialists are scientists. These beakers get multiplied by libraries and whatever other science buildings you might have. The AI has so few cities that losing foreign trade routes in Merc hardly affects you at all. Other than that I went through the cities and any pop working bad tiles like mines without resources were turned into scientists. Same with things like grassland farms if the city wasn't very close to growing and had a reason to grow. Poorly developed cottages are not worth it this late in the game either, Rep scientists are better.

But as said, you are so close to your tech goal here that taking three turns of anarchy for those civic switches is not worth it. You want to get to Steel asap, therefore build wealth in every city to allow you to keep slider at 100% for as long as possible. Once you get Steel you can shut down teching for good, drop slider to 0% and use the gold to upgrade your old City Raider units to rifles while building cannons and more rifles.

Eidt: Actually, doing the civic changes and also picking Pacifism might not be that bad. Gives you a chance to see how much stronger the empire can be without too much of a delay on steel. You get a great person in a couple of turns, so if you make sure the next great person after that is something else, you can use the two of them for a golden age to get a free switch to Police State, Vassalage and Theocracy once you have reached the tech goal.

 

[AcaMetis]

I see. Why a 2-move unit specifically? To be honest, I am completely clueless about using this GG unit. Any other important aspect/function of GG I should know?

Because a 2 (or 3, with Morale) GG medic can move around much easier, and get to where units are that need healing faster. It's especially necessary when you've got an army comprised of 2 units, since a Great Medic that can't keep up with them will slow your war machine down.

I'm really sorry, but I don't quite follow. Can you explain?

As I mentioned before, the general strategy in civ IV is to beeline Liberalism, lib a key military tech as the first person to research Liberalism gets a free technology, and roll over the world with said key military tech before the AIs are able to grab something quickly enough to stop your momentum from putting you in a winning position. The way that most people tend to beeline lib, as Lib itself and especially it's prerequisite tech, Education, is very expensive, is to use a Great Scientist to bulb them - that is, use a Great Person to "lightbulb" a technology, basically consume the great person to immediately dump hundreds upon hundreds of beakers into a tech. The way to generate a lot of great people is to run the Pacifism civic, which gives you +100% (great person points, GPP) in all cities that has your state religion present, and to use another great person to start a Golden Age (+100% in all cities, can swap civics without incurring Anarchy, among other things). Use this combination to generate two or three Great Scientists to bulb your way to Lib, grab it, and than you've got a super early key military advantage and have denied the AIs one way out of the mess you're going to put them in.

There's obviously a lot more to say about this, but that can wait for your next game. I would recommend you focus on both city micro, worker micro and experimenting with Great People. They can turn a loss into a win, if used correctly, so it's definitely worth learning how to use them properly.

What is "SP"? Yeah, I didn't look into the captured cities' wonders. I could have exploited all these war spoils but didn't. What is the rationale of switching to Representation after acquiring Pyramids?

"SP", in this context, refers to...a wonder who's name I can't recall off-hand (can't open the game right now) - Swagadon Paya, or something along those lines. It's a wonder that allows you to use all Religion civics without having the necessary techs for them.

The reason why you'd switch to rep as soon as you grab mids is because Rep gives all specialists in a city - free specialists, citizens you're working as specialists, settled great specialists (including Great Generals IIRC), name it - +3. Basically, Rep doubles the output of your scientist specialists, turns every other specialists into a scientist+, and just generally increases your beaker output massively. You lose Hereditary Rule's +1 per military unit stationed in a city, but Rep brings it's own happiness boost that's frankly good enough when you combine it with it's other bonus. To give you an idea of how huge Rep's bonus is, just take a look at your cities and see how many tiles they have that generate 6, which is obviously a huge amount. With rep every Scientist specialist is worth 6, and every city with just a Library can run two of them.

For the record: Police State is great if you're preparing for/in a long, decisive war (the bonus to military unit production and reduction of war weariness keeps your cities pumping out units faster and longer, obviously important). Universal Suffrage, or Universal Suffering as I like to call it, is a civic you'd only run when employing very specific strategies. Otherwise you'd never use this civic unless forced into it by the UN.

Ok, I'll definitely do that. I'm chin deep into this game enthusiasm-wise and I'm motivated as ever to improve.

Just something I'd like to mention: For as often as we keep saying you still have a lot to learn - and you do, there's entire mechanics to this game that have only been mentioned/glossed over for now, and this game will never even see the latter half of the game's tech tree - you've managed to pick up a great deal of stuff already. You easily could have, say, mistaken Slavery as a trap option and ended up scratching your head as to how people manage to produce enough military to rush an AI so early so quickly, or how people are able to whip out that military without just whipping cities into the ground completely, but you know: 2-pop whips to generate overflow, limit the unhappiness generation and maximize the unit production.

 

[coanda]

you are so close to your tech goal here that taking three turns of anarchy for those civic switches is not worth it

I didn't carefully math it out or try to play it through, so I could be wrong about this. But I have a hunch that a 1-turn swap to Caste System might be worth it. You could run a bunch of scientists, temporarily starving York and Amsterdam, to get a pair of great people out of those cities. Use them to kick off a golden age and make the rest of your civic swaps, finish getting Steel, then before the golden age ends swap to a set of war-focused civics if you want.

 

[lymond]

I see. Just trying to understand this further, when you say "meant to be cottaged", can you be more specific? How would you have improved the tiles?

Spoiler Washington City Screen :

My addressed this some in her post above, but I will follow-up as well. There are a few really powerful things in this game. The most powerful mechanic, as mentioned, is slavery/whipping, which you are already in the process of learning about here. Another very powerful thing is the Bureaucracy civic, which is enabled once you tech Civil Service. Bureaucracy boosts and in the capital by 50%. The real power here is that boost to . Most caps, unless the land is just simply not suited for it, are tailored for Bureaucracy from the early stages of the game. What that means is cottages. A cap with flood plains is especially nice as those tiles are just perfect for cottages as they are a) riverside and b) food positive. Also, just green riverside is nice as well. So, all the flood plains around Washington and any green tiles should be cottaged. NY and Chicago were settled in part as decent nearby cities, but also as helper cities to help grow cottages around Washington. The goal for Washington long term is to take back its food specials and then work all those cottages eventually in Bureaucracy - getting back more cottages as it grows and happy cap increases, which will significantly boost the output, and therefore your research. The cap is usually the main research hub of your empire. (If, in the case that a starting cap has poor land for cottages, one can consider moving the Palace to a better spot)

 

[Pangaea]

Excellent post by @lymond.

I haven't followed this game lately, and see you are past 1500AD now. However, upon looking at that screenshot of Washington, I too am sad about the lack of cottages on those glorious floodplains. If it needs food, I'd rather take the wheat back from the wine city (it does have deer, which is half-decent). The one floodplain with a cottage on it gives you 6 right now (the "bag" means 5 commerce, as does an anvil for hammers later, and a big bread for food). With Bureaucracy from Civil Service, that cottage (presumably a town?) will give the capital 9 . Those 9c is then put through building multipliers, such as a library or market (depending on research slider setting). So one town with Buro and library (when researching at 100%) will give you 9 x 1.25 = 11.25 You could have had 5 towns like that by now, which would have been close to 60 alone from just those 5 tiles. Right now, the entire capital gives you 61.25 . Hopefully this helps you understand how powerful a well-developed capital cottaged up with Buro is. Typically it is the research powerhouse of your empire, and it's not uncommon it will contribute 30-50% of the research from your entire empire.

Kinda late to transform it now because cottages take a long time to develop (70 turns (always worked) from cottage to town), but it's something you should keep in mind in future games.

 

[guyyee]

So many new stuffs to hone my skills on:

1. Capital city micromanagement
2. Civics reshuffling
3. Specialist and Great Person management

I'll keep grinding at it.

 

[AcaMetis]

Just for the record, don't expect the learning train to end there . Once you can take off the Pangaea training wheels and move on to Continents/Fractal map scripts you can start taking a look at everything naval related, from putting together a naval invasion force to the Astronomy race, and there's still another half of the tech tree you haven't gotten to yet either. Not that most games will reach the end of the tech tree, as you've experienced, but it's a good idea to take a look at regardless. Otherwise you might make foolish mistakes like thinking Robotics is a tech that's worth researching .

 

[guyyee]

Just for the record, don't expect the learning train to end there . Once you can take off the Pangaea training wheels and move on to Continents/Fractal map scripts you can start taking a look at everything naval related, from putting together a naval invasion force to the Astronomy race, and there's still another half of the tech tree you haven't gotten to yet either. Not that most games will reach the end of the tech tree, as you've experienced, but it's a good idea to take a look at regardless. Otherwise you might make foolish mistakes like thinking Robotics is a tech that's worth researching .

Hahaha, ok. I see most of the CIV4 gurus here have been playing for over a decade. So I'll take that as a reminder that CIV4 is such a deep game that the learning just never stops.

 

[guyyee]

The goal for Washington long term is to take back its food specials and then work all those cottages eventually in Bureaucracy - getting back more cottages as it grows and happy cap increases, which will significantly boost the output, and therefore your research.

What do you mean by "taking back its food specials" and "getting back more cottages"?

 

[lymond]

What do you mean by "taking back its food specials" and "getting back more cottages"?

Well, food specials mean the food resources like wheat, corn, sheep, etc. First, before continuing below, please reread my last post just to absorb that info again for context.

Ultimately, your goal for your capital is to be a Bureau cap, if the land is so suited. Your Washington is suited - it has flood plains, river tiles, and green stuff.

Very early game, your starting cap is going to produce at least your first couple of cities or so ...maybe some units if early rushing. You will also get a library in their asap to run those first 2 scientists for your first GS.

Long term, the goal for Washington is to tailor the city and its BFC for Bureaucracy. That means cottage growth and city growth. Your cap is one city you eventually want to grow as large as it can. Other cities don't matter as much - they serve whatever purpose they are suited for and can be abused for what you need - within reason. (of course, many decisions you make are based on your goals for victory)

NY and Chicago (or is it Boston?), your first two cities were settled close by and with overlap to Wash. These cities are "productive" but also serve as helper cities to grow cottages for Washington - those cottages being priority. Long term I don't care much how big these two cities get - I mean, they will get as big as needed but it is of no priority or importance compared to what Washington does. Your priority is the Bureau cap as once you get Civil Service and switch to Bureaucracy, you should have a nice Washington at or close to happy cap that can work all those nicely developed cottages. Wash will get a huge boost to commerce and; therefore, your research.

So Wash will start to grow as happy cap increases, taking back more of the developing cottages that your helper cities were helping to grow all this time, increasing Wash's overall commerce output.

(An overlapped city to a food rich cap - wash is not what I'd call "food rich" - may long-term permanently keep one of food resources...a depends. But overlapped cities can share specials and share cottages as what is best suited at that stage of the game vs. whipping and happy caps. It's about finding the right balance at a given point in time and making sure best tiles are always worked. You will get more and more acclimated to this concept the more you play and with different scenarios - maps/food/etc)

 

[guyyee]

Earlier in the game, this trade proposal came up (Montezuma offers Mysticism, wants Pottery in return) - I didn't take it 'coz it's a cheap tech to research. I should have?

Spoiler Tech Trade with Montezuma :

 

[Zavior]

There is a such thing as a trade limit in the game, after which the AI's will refuse to trade techs with you. The AI will say they fear you are becoming too advanced(the nice acronym wfyabta). There are exceptions like Mansa Musa who will forever trade with you.

It is often a good choice to not accept trades for cheap techs - especially ones you can easily skip in the early game. The AI's often want to include techs like archery in deals with you which you can easily deny.
On lower difficulties you will easily out tech the AI and won't really hit this limit, but on higher difficulties this can be something you need to keep an eye out for.

 

[nate46]

Trading for really cheap techs if you can't use them immediately is usually a bad idea, yeah.

There's a limit to how many techs you can get through trading that lasts pretty much all game... if you take too many stupid small techs from trading, the AIs wont trade with you later when you need to trade for the good stuff. Some AIs more so than others. Unless you have an immediate, urgent need for a monument in some city, I wouldn't take that trade.

If he offered something like Iron working for Mathematics though, that would be a deal worth taking. Once you get alphabet, you usually want to shop around to see if there are any good techs (not mysticism) you can pick up.

There's no Diplomatic penalty for talking to the AIs every turn and offering them every trade imaginable. If the trade doesn't go through, there's never a diplomatic hit, no matter how insulted they say they are.

You can also skip the haggling phase usually by clicking the "What would make this deal work?" option--they'll give you their best offer immediately most of the time.

 

[guyyee]

Question about Heroic Epic requirement:

I had wanted to build Heroic Epic in a city (Amsterdam) but was told that it requires a unit with Level 4 experience within the city.

I checked the units:

Spoiler Unit Experience :

There is a War Elephant with XP: 5/5 - why is the option to build heroic epic still disabled?

 

[lymond]

That's 5 out of 5 XP, not "Level". Level is what the XP gets you. You can see an individual units level at the bottom right left. Easiest way to unlock HE is creating a supermedic with your first GG.

edit: oh..and the promos must be taken to level 4 to unlock

 

[sampsa]

You don't need an unit in the city to build the HE. It's enough to have one unit reach 10XP. I don't think he even needs to be alive anymore.

 

[guyyee]

That's 5 out of 5 XP, not "Level". Level is what the XP gets you. You can see an individual units level at the bottom right. Easiest way to unlock HE is creating a supermedic with your first GG.

edit: oh..and the promos must be taken to level 4 to unlock

Where on the bottom right?

 

[guyyee]

You don't need an unit in the city to build the HE. It's enough to have one unit reach 10XP. I don't think he even needs to be alive anymore.

So, the unit must be produced by the city where Heroic Epic is to be built and that unit can leave the city and later killed - that still qualifies for Heroic Epic build?

 

[elitetroops]

Doesn't matter where the unit is built. As long as you have at some point had a unit promoted three times (requires 10 XP or 8 XP as charismatic) you can build HE anywhere.