How often do you....?

[Bonesy]

I play normal speed on small pangaea maps on emperor difficulty. Almost all of my victories are domination.

I think I'm missing out on some game mechanics.

I almost never use spies.

I almost never use the cultural slider.

I almost never use watermills, workshops, preserves or levees.

How often are people using these things given my game settings?

Lastly, what would be considered an early date for Liberalism? Keep in mind that I can rarely get more than 6 cities or so early on given how small the map is.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Chuwe3y]

I rarely use spies too but was playing around with it but on immortal difficulty so wasn't even a fun test. Everything is so expensive but given the right civics and building it was some fun to piss off ai (but I knew I was going to lose). What I learn was it was easier stealing techs from Ai after they take your city and announce peace treaty so I'm guessing it depends on culture and population.

For culture I only boost it when I know I'm about to win a domination game but I've seen players use it to whip and keep cities happy. Or culture victory.

Those worker improvements are only use depending on what you specialize your city into.

As for liberalism I tried to go for but fail most of the time. Hint never trade education to mansa lol. But I've seen players get them early due to bulbing. Forgot what tech path it was as you had to skip something.

 

[Ghpstage]

I almost never use spies.

If your playing BTS then unless you put in a serious investment into espionage they tend to be pretty limited, but still can be useful for exploring and inciting revolts.
If you playing vanilla or warlords I don't remember ever using them myself.

I almost never use the cultural slider.

Obviously pretty important for culture wins, but can be a useful way of getting in a hurry and at a low cost.
Most likely useful for dealing with large and/or sudden problems from war wearriness, mass drafting, resolution defiance or emancipation. Can also be good used an alternative to Monarchy as it costs very few compared to units in every city.

I almost never use watermills, workshops, preserves or levees.

Watermills are pretty good in production cities under State Property, workshops are too, and if your playing BTS they are significantly better, levees are good for cities with decent length of river in their BFCs, and as for forest preserves, whats that?


In short, which version of civ 4 are you playing?

 

[ShengWuLien]

Watermills are only worthwhile in SP, in my view. At that point you get the same food as a pre-Bio farm plus a couple hammers.

Workshops for me are a must. I think using them has transformed my game. Suddenly a flat grass tile becomes a green hill mine, with Caste and Guilds. With Chem and SP it gets even sillier. You can massively out-produce the AI and build wealth for a very powerful economy.

 

[Bonesy]

I'm playing BTS. Thanks for the responses so far. I'm still curious about Liberalism dates. I frequently get it around or before 1000 A.D. but I'm hearing about much earlier dates.

 

[Ghpstage]

In BTS if you do invest in espionage then spies can be very strong, for example by playing around with the modifiers on espionage costs by giving a city away and drowning it in culture you can get some absurd -> conversion rates via tech stealing. This however is dependant on map, opponents and knowing the game mechanics pretty well.
Theres lots of other things they can do, but you can more or less completely ignore this part of the game if you want without too much consequence.

Workshops as ShengWuLien mentioned are very nice with any 2 or more of Chemistry, Guilds and Caste in play, and become awesome with SP.

For fast Lib times your looking at sub 500AD on normal speed, standard sized maps, but it would often be best to delay it to pick up something else if the AI isn't challenging for it when your coming close. To get much earlier than that means either that the stars have aligned, or that your playing marathon speed.
As for you playing on small maps, I don't know how well tech cost scales with size, but I can say that 1000AD +/- 200 years is quite typical for Emperor players on standard games.

 

[robbyextreme]

Espionage:

For now you should just invest all your points into the nearest AI from the get-go. Always remove the points when you meet new civs and keep it on one person. Later on you can steal a tech, usually the first tech is something like masonry, priesthood, sailing..etc

Sometimes you lose the spy but usually you don't and it's worth spending hammers to take the risk.

You would run 100% espionage for city revolts only. And you should have some 12+ points already before running 100% To break down the cultural defense of enemy cities.

Besides those 2 things, the rest are useless.

Watermills

I make sure all my rivers have watermills built up to 1 turn left. That way when state property arrives I can immediately switch all my tiles. That's really the only reason to use watermills. Adding 1 hammer to every river while remaining 3 food like a farm.

And for cultural slider, you wanna put 10% which adds 2 happyness with theaters if you need it to keep growing. Never stop growing, so use the culture if you absolutely have to. (no monarch, no resources to trade..etc)

it's cheaper to run 10% than build a ton of temples and markets.

 

[Bonesy]

Good stuff, thanks.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Actually I value Levees pretty high, how could you possibly say no to a free Hammer per River tile?

 

[Manco Capac]

Actually I value Levees pretty high, how could you possibly say no to a free Hammer per River tile?

Easy. I have often seen capitals with like 2-3 river tiles The levee cost 180 and the gain is 2-3 hammers per turn, which means the return of investment needs 90 or 60 turns. If you win the game before 60 turns, then you just invested into something that has no value. Of course, I did not enter other parameters like Factory, IW, Coal Plant...

 

[vanillasine]

EDIT: decided to make a new post as not completely relevant to thread

 

[backthief]

WONDEFULL way to use for warmonger players.

1) when you start, focus your spy points on the 2nd Civ you (think) gonna hit. The first is a waste seems you prolly going to wipe him before you get enough points.
2) Before you start the attack on the 2nd Civ, get 3-4 spies and place them in the enemy city you going to hit.
3) Destroy Walls/Castles, start Revolt (lows city defense)
4) Win
5) Next city
6) Destroy Walls/Castles, Start Revolt
7) Win

 

[Iranon]

Espionage: The espionage mechanics don't favour a middle ground - either use whatever you get incidentally or go all-out. Going all-out is efficient and flexible, but fiddly and unforgiving of mistakes. I do this occasionally but not often.

Culture slider: Occasionally. During times of extreme war weariness: kill commerce as far as possible (for production where possible, specialists where applicable).
For a slow-ish cultural victory, a split economy makes sense. Either 0% culture and artists in the big 3, or 100% culture and hammers/specialists outside the culture cities.

Watermills, workshops: Quite attractive under State Property (which has less potential than lategame setups involving corporations but gets returns immediately without requiring major investment). Watermills are a candidate for the best improvement there, with Caste System workshops + windmills has the same food and hammers as farms and mines, with some free commerce.

Forest Preserves: Not a terribly strong improvement even under environmentalism (forest hammer, 2 commerce... about half as good as a typical lategame improvement) but can be worth it on overlapped tiles for the double health/happiness bonus.
Excellent in the National Park City - a specialist which we'd otherwise have to feed with a farm, without the happiness/health drain, with a hammer and possibly commerce thrown in.

Levee: Perfectly fine building, if more than a handful tiles are affected I like them.

Liberalism: Never really checked. I don't rush it, I want to snatch it quite late so I can get the juiciest prize. Steel usually means a won game, not very reliable on Deity though.

 

[Bonesy]

Thanks for the replies.

The main reason I ask about Liberalism dates is because I hear about really fast domination victories even on larger maps. I think I rely too heavily on the free tech from Liberalism to get me to Curs before I really start blasting the AI.

 

[capnvonbaron]

I think many times the fast domination victories take place when players use UUs to dominate several AI early on, take a couple of capitals for their own, and bully AI out of gold and techs... then once cuirs come in there's only a quick mop-up left. A smart use of espionage can speed this along, since you can often do with a minimum of siege if you do it right.

Keep in mind it may not be completely possible to succeed with an early victory all the time. It takes a special set of circumstances... close rivals, non-PRO neighbors, a strong starting capital and decent surrounding land... all these things are needed for a super-fast victory.