[BTS] How to compete with the AI's absolutely enormous armies?

[Windsor]

Exactly. Wasn't that obvious from what I wrote?

It was. I just didn't read what you wrote properly, sorry.

 

[GenericName1998]

Binary research is irrelevant for evaluating the Market. Only average slider position matters.

Doesn't the binary research (didn't know it was called that) minimize the loss from decimals being rounded down in civ4?

 

[GenericName1998]

Spoiler :

The tiles you should improve asap and work full time are wet corn (6) and gold (38) and that's about it. With wet corn you are growing quite fast to size 3 so it's probably the correct size to start the settler, immediately when hitting size 3. Again, note that the gold is generating only 1 towards your settler, but that amount of is a bit too tempting to pass on.

View attachment 568543

If you correct the following habits your game will dramatically improve:

• Expand as fast as possible early on to at least 4 cities
• Don't save forests, chop them early for faster expansion
• If you build units, use them. No use paying +20 per turn for a standing army
• Build a lot less buildings

Allright, those seem like solid tips. It's easy to forget that new cities are also capable of producing stuff (like workers), which I wouldn't be getting if I'm growing the capital alone.

Would you say that preserving forests is also useless? I like to save some non-river forests that are shared by multiple cities for the free health.

I might also be waiting for mathematics too long before I seriously start chopping.

Going into early wars is kinda scary lol. Not to mention that the AI loves to build lots of units (particularly with aggAI), whereas I prefer to invest in my economy first and build units in periodic waves of running theology.

 

[Nick723]

Doesn't the binary research (didn't know it was called that) minimize the loss from decimals being rounded down in civ4?

Yes - but after the early game the rounding is insignificant in the grand scheme of things

 

[Nick723]

Allright, those seem like solid tips. It's easy to forget that new cities are also capable of producing stuff (like workers), which I wouldn't be getting if I'm growing the capital alone.

Would you say that preserving forests is also useless? I like to save some non-river forests that are shared by multiple cities for the free health.

I might also be waiting for mathematics too long before I seriously start chopping.

Going into early wars is kinda scary lol. Not to mention that the AI loves to build lots of units (particularly with aggAI), whereas I prefer to invest in my economy first and build units in periodic waves of running theology.

I would never preserve forests for health (except perhaps in extreme cases in isolation games, when health can be hard to come by). You can trade for health resources fairly easily, and also generally the health cap is a ‘soft’ cap rather than the ‘hard’ happy cap (it’s perfectly fine to grow into unhealthiness sometimes).

Preserving forests for maths sometimes makes sense, but I’d say only if you’re waiting a few turns for maths to come in (rather than say 20 turns away). Otherwise the smaller immediate benefit is better than waiting so long long for 50% more.

 

[sampsa]

Yeh, that 20 very early or 30 post-math is more useful than +1 much much later. Most games can be won already by the time starts to matter. -1 due to here and there isn't the end of the world either.

 

[sampsa]

Going into early wars is kinda scary lol. Not to mention that the AI loves to build lots of units (particularly with aggAI), whereas I prefer to invest in my economy first and build units in periodic waves of running theology.

Learning how to take out your neighbor at construction is a very useful skill to have. I have played a couple of games here on emperor, check them out:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/another-emperor-shadow-game-thread.638118/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/another-emperor-mid-game-attempt.638316/

peaceful REX:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/emperor-obsessed-with-this-toku-start.654215/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/going-back-to-emperor.646352/

 

[Pangaea]

Yeh, that 20 very early or 30 post-math is more useful than +1 much much later. Most games can be won already by the time starts to matter. -1 due to here and there isn't the end of the world either.

I agree, although this did feel a little harsh

Spoiler :

 

[Qactus]

That's 28 Mining Inc base hammers
Nice