How to make the best use of my starting position?

[lockdar]

Hello,

I'm a Civ1&2 player that has recently aquired Civ4 and I'm trying to get the feel for the game. When this starting position popped up I didn't really know what to do with it since it has some pretty good potential I assume. I'm playing a marathon game so I can take my time to learn, at the moment I'm using the arabians to get a feel for the whole religion thing in the game.

My question to you is; What can I do with this starting position to help me get my religion game started?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[njorls]

You have a lake in your current fat cross, which I believe is 2 commerce. You will get a Clam resource, which will be another 2 commerce, on your 1st border pop.

You also have a cow resource, you will need animal husbandry to improve that tile.

You start with Meditation and The Wheel.

Commerce tiles help with research. Working the lake tile would be ideal, but as you don't have fishing yet, a detour to fishing wouldn't help you found Buddhism any faster.

I would continue with researching Meditation to found Buddhism. Work the tiles with the highest commerce... I don't think there will be any until your first border pop, when you can work the floodplains.

I would research Fishing next, time a workboat so that fishing and the workboat finish at the same time. Have the workboat work the clam tile. Build Warriors or Barracks in the meantime. When fishing is done you can either research animal husbandry to work the cow tile and reaveal horses, or pottery to start building cottages to increase commerce and your research. You won't need to make a worker until you have something for him to work on, currently you only have the wheel.

Mining and Bronze Working are your highest priorities after those. Switch to Slavery as soon as you research BW.

Agriculture can wait. There's no food resource that needs to be farmed, and you should have plenty of food in your capital. Cottage all the floodplains and grassland tiles. Mine the hills if you need more production. Be careful with chopping forest, all the floodplains give a health hit, the forests will help offset that.

If you do found Buddhism don't immediately change to it, you will get a penalty for other civs you encounter. Only change to it if you can also change to Organised Religion for the 25% bonus to building production.

*edit* AH requires Hunting or Agriculture. You might want to research Pottery before AH, and have your worker make cottages so that research time for AH is faster.

 

[clairis]

what kind of penalty? for having another religion when other civs don't? do you mean they just won't like you after they discover other religions?

 

[pigswill]

You'll need fishing to be able to work the lake or the sea resource; if you don't start with it (and you don't) your best bet is to start building a warrior while researching polytheism (slightly less popular among AI though its always a gamble), after first border pop work a flood plain square (3food,1 commerce); when youget to size 2 work another floodplain. This is probably your best chance of getting a religion.
If you adopt anything as a state religion you'll get diplomatic plusses from co-religionists and diplomatic penalties from any other religion; this affects how likely they are to trade with you as well as attack you. You can found and spread a religion with adopting it as a state religion however.
You didn't say what difficulty level you're playing; I assume it'll be something like warlord or noble and that in itself improves your chances of discovering poly first and grabbing hinduism.

 

[DaveMcW]

Don't worry, you'll get Meditation first with no effort at all (unless you're playing a difficulty where the AI gets bonuses).

The most important things to remember about a religion game are:
1. One religion is enough, focus on economy techs after that.
2. Build missionaries and convert your neighbors before someone else does.

 

[Elrohir]

Agriculture can wait. There's no food resource that needs to be farmed, and you should have plenty of food in your capital. Cottage all the floodplains and grassland tiles. Mine the hills if you need more production. Be careful with chopping forest, all the floodplains give a health hit, the forests will help offset that.

A nitpick: There is a food tile there that needs Agriculture, there is rice under the warrior. I wouldn't change the order that you've suggested, but Agriculture should be researched before you start teching towards Alphabet or Code of Laws or Iron Working. (Assuming you have copper)

 

[flamingzaroc121]

get pottery and cottage those flood plains. that is a great commerce city, and if you can get a religion, shrine, and spread your religion you will just be raking in the dough$$$$$

can you post a save, i want to play

 

[Landmonitor]

I would consider farming all those floodplains if I were you and running as many specialists in Mecca as possible. Specialists have a whole new meaning in Civ IV, as many threads will tell you. The more specialists you run in one city, the more great people you get. The National Epic national wonder will double this again, as will the pacifism civic (as long as your state religion is in the city).

Finally, in case you don't already know, you can only build two national wonders per city (although unlimited great wonders per city).

 

[njorls]

A nitpick: There is a food tile there that needs Agriculture, there is rice under the warrior. I wouldn't change the order that you've suggested, but Agriculture should be researched before you start teching towards Alphabet or Code of Laws or Iron Working. (Assuming you have copper)

Good eye there That would mean you'd want to do Agriculture as the prerequisite to Animal Husbandry.

 

[Elandal]

I would consider farming all those floodplains if I were you and running as many specialists in Mecca as possible.

Considering the city has three food resources (clam, rice, and cow) I'm not sure if farming the floodplains is needed. Clam gives F+2 (+3 with lighthouse), rice F+3 (it's irrigated from the lake), and grassland cow F+2. That's +7 food (+8 with lighthouse) working the three food resources already, allowing (with lighthouse) 4 specialists at size 7. And that's a lot for the size

As the lake will be F+1, four floodplains for F+4 (if cottaged) you'll end up with high food surplus even with the two plains and three hills. Mansa is Financial, so going for SE instead of cottages feels wasteful.

 

[Landmonitor]

Yeah, but its not about a SE, its about having one really good GP farm, and three food resources with four flooplains qualifies. To do it properly, there shouldn't be any cottages, only farms. Every other city can have cottages, but I would farm this one entirely. Before it becomes a real GP farm, it will also hammer out settlers and workers very well and will good for whipping.

Just what I'd do... cottaging the city would make it powerful too, but for a different purpose.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Hello,

I'm a Civ1&2 player that has recently aquired Civ4 and I'm trying to get the feel for the game. When this starting position popped up I didn't really know what to do with it since it has some pretty good potential I assume. I'm playing a marathon game so I can take my time to learn, at the moment I'm using the arabians to get a feel for the whole religion thing in the game.

My question to you is; What can I do with this starting position to help me get my religion game started?

Racing to the early religions depends on commerce. Probably the easiest way to get started with that is to simply use the city governor - ask it to prioritize commerce for you. Click here for an explanation if you don't recognize what that means.

You can also grow - more population means more opportunities for research. You don't have anything useful for a worker to do for a while yet, so hold off on that.

Also useful in a religious game is Stonehenge (and likewise the Oracle) because they help produce Great Prophets. Great Prophets can be used to build a Shrine, or to discover religious technologies (it is often necessary to clear away a few boring techs to get the Prophet to research something useful for you. Search the forums for Great People Tech Preferences). You can also produce Great Prophets by building temples, and hiring prophet specialists.

In my religious games, the usual pattern is to score one of the early three religions, then a couple of the later ones. But there are perfect storms where you can run the table (I don't think this is one).

Getting two or more religions founded in the same city has some interesting implications later in the game. (You can read about them in the link above).

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Mansa is Financial, so going for SE instead of cottages feels wasteful.

If OP is playing Arabia, Mansa's traits aren't likely to be immediately relevant.

 

[Elandal]

Noted, VoU - shouldn't post when too tired, getting threads mixed up

Vanilla Saladin is Phi, so SE would be a good option. Warlords Saladin is Prot/Spi, in which case CE and SE should be more or less equal options.

@Landmonitor: hand't considered the GP farm aspect here. Add four farmed floodplains to my original foodcount and it's 8 specialists at size 15, working seven F+2 or better tiles. That much food per tile up to the size is indeed quite uncommon. My first thought would be Oxford city that pulls in serious commerce from cottages and can still handle several scientists, therefore probably cot'ing everything (including grassland hills).

 

[lockdar]

Thanks for all the good advice so far I'm indeed playing saladin on Vanilla so he is phi/spi. When I made my first post I just went ahead and started to play around a little bit but when reading the suggestions I see what I did wrong.
I will post the 4000bc save somewhere tonight when I get home.
Looks like there are two things to try here:

- Cottage spam with a shrine for high commerce (for gold or research)
- Farming all and making a GP farm

I'm gonna try out both of these options to see how it works out for me

 

[cabert]

Thanks for all the good advice so far I'm indeed playing saladin on Vanilla so he is phi/spi. When I made my first post I just went ahead and started to play around a little bit but when reading the suggestions I see what I did wrong.
I will post the 4000bc save somewhere tonight when I get home.
Looks like there are two things to try here:

- Cottage spam with a shrine for high commerce (for gold or research)
- Farming all and making a GP farm

I'm gonna try out both of these options to see how it works out for me

let me just add that you don't need the shrine to cottage spam
beware of a rather common confusion : commerce isn't gold
commerce is a global value that can benefit from multipliers (bureaucracy) then be divided into research, gold and culture (through sliders).
Gold generated by the shrine isn't convertible to research, it's gold.

 

[lockdar]

let me just add that you don't need the shrine to cottage spam
beware of a rather common confusion : commerce isn't gold
commerce is a global value that can benefit from multipliers (bureaucracy) then be divided into research, gold and culture (through sliders).
Gold generated by the shrine isn't convertible to research, it's gold.

Dang, I was mixing some stuff up there, got it now

I attached the 4000bc save game, enjoy it.

 

[Paeanblack]

Your capital has far,far more food than it needs. There are two common ways to use a high-food city:

1) Globe Theater + Heroic Epic + Barracks + Slavery
Use slavery to whip obscene numbers of units and overwhelm your opponents with raw quantity.

2) National Epic + (Caste System or Library + Market + etc)
Work every tile that gives >= 4 food and leave the rest as specialists.

Unfortunately, both of these methods are very wasteful of the Palace and Bureaucracy bonuses, so neither are optimal here. You will want to either:

3) Eventually build the Palace somewhere else and switch to plan (1) or (2)

4) Sprint for a monster cottage town with Bureaucracy.
The best way to do this is to settle three more cities with very heavy overlap on your capital. Use these extra cities to work more cottages within your capitals radius. Aim for early Monarchy; use the Oracle for this if you can. Once you have Hereditary Rule, flood your capital with warriors to remove the happiness limit. Every time your capital grows, you take over a well developed village from the helper-cities instead of starting a new cottage from scratch. Push hard for Bureaucracy, and you can have a size 15-18 capital, depending on your health resources.

 

[JimT]

Yeah, but its not about a SE, its about having one really good GP farm, and three food resources with four flooplains qualifies. To do it properly, there shouldn't be any cottages, only farms. Every other city can have cottages, but I would farm this one entirely. Before it becomes a real GP farm, it will also hammer out settlers and workers very well and will good for whipping.

Just what I'd do.. cottaging the city would make it powerful too, but for a different purpose.

It would be a great GP Farm but there are also floodplains available to the north. I would consider using that as my GP Farm and cottage this for the early commerce to tech quickly, not tie up my first city on specialist enabling buildings and the later Bureaucracy bonus.

Not saying thats the best way to go but thats certainly what I would be thinking at this point.

 

[Landmonitor]

Yeah, to some extent this is half a dozen of one and six of the other... and if it became a cottage town, more mines could be worked.

@Elandal: Oxford is good in a cottage town, but if you run representation (from pyramids or old-fashioned getting to constitution), Oxford can be VERY effective in your GP farm, especially after you build an academy and permanently settle a couple of great scientists. I've pushed this idea hard in one game and with three settled Great Scientists and an academy (around 1650's), its a no-brainer for having Oxford there. I'm running 60% science and researching Printing Press in 7 turns... I only have six cities besides my capital and only three of those are heavily cottaged (one is in the middle of a bunch of hills; windmills) and the other two are new but will be cottaged.

Anyway, the point is that with representation, your GP farm will be a much better location for Oxford than a heavily cottaged city... generally.

Having said all that, I don't think Lockdar would be making a mistake by cottaging or by making Mecca a GP farm. I'm interested to see how it pans out. This is a nice map, but I can't go below (or above!) Monarch right now.