How to manage a great empire

[Peter84]

When playing, I always strive to build a great state. However, I get discouraged when the number of cities and units increases.

As I already have several dozen cities and several hundred units, the transition to the next turn takes a long time (Issue orders to produce or change it in cities and give orders to all units or groups of units). I tried to set up automatic production and give automatic orders to units, e.g. workers. The effect is usually annoying. Unnecessary things are built and the workers instead of building them run around the map and build the wrong upgrades. I forget to give orders and load the previous turn, which makes the game even longer.

An additional problem for me is maintaining a large empire. I always lack money. With each turn I am getting more and more backward in relation to other nations. Most playing Russia. Often, building one city requires less science.

How do you deal with these problems? How to improve the management of cities and units?

Is it possible, for example, to change the order of issuing orders to units so as to give orders to units that are next to each other and not randomly across the map? The same applies to allocating production in cities. I would rather give orders from west to east or vice versa, and not after giving an order in one part of the empire, the map is automatically scrolled to the other end. Is it possible to highlight units without an order without selecting them? Are there any in-game options that I choose to help solve such problems?

 

[Set]

Turning on minimize pop-ups in settings helped me a lot with this. Makes it so City production, tech choice, civic revolts etc. are just listed as buttons on the tope right that you can click through at your leisure.

 

[black213]

Turning on minimize pop-ups in settings helped me a lot with this. Makes it so City production, tech choice, civic revolts etc. are just listed as buttons on the tope right that you can click through at your leisure.

Goodness gracious, I should've enabled this a long time ago. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

 

[Enyavar]

Several of the OP problems come generally with Civ 4. Back in the olden days when I played a huge empire in the vanilla game, I used to have the very same problems with micromanagement.
Yes, I prefer micromanagement, especially when whipping out an early economy, and that is VERY time-consuming (always check on the tick marks in the Bug console, btw., that helps a lot with whipping). Problems like "too many units" can be solved by grouping them in stacks as much as possible. I also make use of build-queues, but even then, the problems get worse because with the right micromanagement you can produce three things faster by flipping the build-queue each turn. (esp. in early despotic whipping/unhappiness routines). But later in the game, and especially when I have the advantage and don't need to worry about bleeding money/research, I very much rely on build-queues and stacks.

On the lack of money problem, that is a typical issue with early overextension when you have a big fat core (like Russia has). I always want to maximize my core population, and I'm sure you also do, so the optimal build for Russia is a ring of 6-7 cities around Moscow. That means 7-8 cities which you want to settle asap, right? Wrong! Only settle the most lucrative spots first, and develop them so that they can care for themselves. Settle the less good spots of the core later, or never; you mainly need them as population center balancing the periphery.
You might want to check out the detailed finances of each city. Set the research rate that you think is healthy for your development, without regards for deficit (almost always the tech rate should be above 50% in my opinion!) and THEN check out each city in your empire. All cities that are operating at a loss, are just that: A loss. If you can't make them profitable in some soonish time (markets, improved resources, plain hammer-to-wealth) and especially when they are not required for the win? Don't bother to ever settle/conquer the spot.

This comes with a double benefit: Every city too much is increasing your workload of micromanagement, and every city too much is also draining your wealth and research rates.

 

[Leoreth]

What is the biggest win from a modding perspective that I could add?

Optimise unit cycling order to keep the jumps minimal? Same for city cycling? Anything else?

 

[1SDANi]

What is the biggest win from a modding perspective that I could add?

Optimise unit cycling order to keep the jumps minimal? Same for city cycling? Anything else?

A sound effect that plays when an enemy unit alert goes out. I often don't notice the visual icon and lose units. Also a red coloured entry in the log and the part of the screen where great people births and such momentarily appear.

 

[Set]

What is the biggest win from a modding perspective that I could add?

Optimise unit cycling order to keep the jumps minimal? Same for city cycling? Anything else?

Optimising unit cycling would be a big win. A step beyond that would be getting rid of automatic unit cycling altogether and instead implementing an interface button somewhere (under the sliders?) which functions as a "next unit" button. Letting you cycle through units on your own time rather then being dragged around the map until you've dealt with everything.

Goodness gracious, I should've enabled this a long time ago. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I'm glad it helped. Civ actually has a lot of tools to help manage a big empire which I didn't start using until recently. In addition to minimize pop-ups you have:

CTRL L-Click to select all cities on the continent
SHIFT L-Click to deselect one city or to select several specific cities
SHIFT R-Click while a city or multiple cities are selected to set a rally point
ALT L-Click a unit to build while a city is selected to create an infinite build queue.
CTRL + number- Saves a build queue in the city screen which you can then recall with the same number

Late game war becomes a lot easier to manage when you only use a few clicks to rally all cities to close to the front line and then set groups of them to produce certain types of units. Siege, land, air, etc. I usually leave several core cities off infinite unit queues to build specific things as needed. Also helps a lot if you accept that playing slightly sub-optimally is worth cutting 50% or more off your turn times!

Worth looking at civ 4 hotkeys in general. There are also easy ways to manage huge groups of units (including RTS style control groups) but I'm guilty of not using a lot of these.

https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/references/keyboard-shortcuts/

 

[Leoreth]

Optimising unit cycling would be a big win. A step beyond that would be getting rid of automatic unit cycling altogether and instead implementing an interface button somewhere (under the sliders?) which functions as a "next unit" button. Letting you cycle through units on your own time rather then being dragged around the map until you've dealt with everything.

What would you be doing instead of cycling to the next unit that is ready? Is this in cases where you have sleeping/fortified units you want to give orders to?

I'm glad it helped. Civ actually has a lot of tools to help manage a big empire which I didn't start using until recently. In addition to minimize pop-ups you have:

CTRL L-Click to select all cities on the continent
SHIFT L-Click to deselect one city or to select several specific cities
SHIFT R-Click while a city or multiple cities are selected to set a rally point
ALT L-Click a unit to build while a city is selected to create an infinite build queue.
CTRL + number- Saves a build queue in the city screen which you can then recall with the same number

Late game war becomes a lot easier to manage when you only use a few clicks to rally all cities to close to the front line and then set groups of them to produce certain types of units. Siege, land, air, etc. I usually leave several core cities off infinite unit queues to build specific things as needed. Also helps a lot if you accept that playing slightly sub-optimally is worth cutting 50% or more off your turn times!

Worth looking at civ 4 hotkeys in general. There are also easy ways to manage huge groups of units (including RTS style control groups) but I'm guilty of not using a lot of these.

https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/references/keyboard-shortcuts/

Literally WTH

 

[Set]

What would you be doing instead of cycling to the next unit that is ready? Is this in cases where you have sleeping/fortified units you want to give orders to?

I usually want to manage all units on a given "front" at one time. What sometimes happens instead is that while I'm trying to reorganize units in say, Russia, after giving orders to one unit the game will drag me across the map to France, or North America or wherever to give orders to a worker that's just finished an improvement or a new unit that's just been built. I can click back to Russia but as soon as I finish giving an order again I'll be dragged back to the waiting unit in France. I think of unit orders mostly geographically. I maually go through units in a given area until they've all been given orders. Optimising unit cycling would help a lot since I won't be dragged around as much by the camera anymore but a next unit button would be ideal

Basically I think it would be easier to handle empire/army management if you manually gave all the orders that were important to you first. It's only afterwards that you should be cycled around your empire to the units you've forgotten to give orders, or who aren't doing anything particularly important. A next unit button works well for this since the player gets to decide what's important. Could just be an option in the BUG menu as well.

Also, particularly if minimize pop-ups is enabled, a lot of times I want to do city management at the start of my turn. This is a lot harder if every time you leave the city screen you get dragged back to look at the unit at the front of the cycling queue.

Literally WTH

It was a revelation when I figured all this stuff out. Could finally play and have fun in the modern era!

 

[Leoreth]

I usually want to manage all units on a given "front" at one time. What sometimes happens instead is that while I'm trying to reorganize units in say, Russia, after giving orders to one unit the game will drag me across the map to France, or North America or wherever to give orders to a worker that's just finished an improvement or a new unit that's just been built. I can click back to Russia but as soon as I finish giving an order again I'll be dragged back to the waiting unit in France. I think of unit orders mostly geographically. I maually go through units in a given area until they've all been given orders. Optimising unit cycling would help a lot since I won't be dragged around as much by the camera anymore but a next unit button would be ideal

Basically I think it would be easier to handle empire/army management if you manually gave all the orders that were important to you first. It's only afterwards that you should be cycled around your empire to the units you've forgotten to give orders, or who aren't doing anything particularly important. A next unit button works well for this since the player gets to decide what's important. Could just be an option in the BUG menu as well.

Okay that makes sense, I just thought that if cycling was optimised to keep the jumps minimal would already address the problem mostly. But I guess it depends on personal preference.

 

[need my speed]

I would personally prefer an optimised cycling, yes.

But then, I am Dutch. Of course I'd prefer cycling.

 

[Zaddy]

Being able to quickly choose a custom build order for new cities would be nice, particularly if you could choose more than one.

Ie. being able to click a button and easily queue two workers, a granary and a forge in one click, or a different button for a "infrastructure" build order containing lots of basic infra buildings selected by the player.

Though obviously I have no idea if something like this is feasible in the game engine.

Also, do you know how possible it is to improve/change the automatic city governor AI? It could use... love...

 

[Leoreth]

Also, do you know how possible it is to improve/change the automatic city governor AI? It could use... love...

Not to alarm you but that's the same AI your AI opponents use.

 

[merijn_v1]

Being able to quickly choose a custom build order for new cities would be nice, particularly if you could choose more than one.

Ie. being able to click a button and easily queue two workers, a granary and a forge in one click, or a different button for a "infrastructure" build order containing lots of basic infra buildings selected by the player.

Though obviously I have no idea if something like this is feasible in the game engine.

Also, do you know how possible it is to improve/change the automatic city governor AI? It could use... love...

This is already possible. You can save the queue of a city by pressing ctrl+numkey, for exampe ctrl+1. You can load the queue by pressing the numkey when you are in the city screen. You can have a queue for each numkey, so that should mean you can save 10 different queues.

 

[Zaddy]

This is already possible. You can save the queue of a city by pressing ctrl+numkey, for exampe ctrl+1. You can load the queue by pressing the numkey when you are in the city screen. You can have a queue for each numkey, so that should mean you can save 10 different queues.

Almost 8 thousand hours over a decade playing this game and I'm just now learning about this, good lord... Thanks so much for telling me!!

 

[Leoreth]

Optimising unit cycling would be a big win. A step beyond that would be getting rid of automatic unit cycling altogether and instead implementing an interface button somewhere (under the sliders?) which functions as a "next unit" button. Letting you cycle through units on your own time rather then being dragged around the map until you've dealt with everything.



I'm glad it helped. Civ actually has a lot of tools to help manage a big empire which I didn't start using until recently. In addition to minimize pop-ups you have:

CTRL L-Click to select all cities on the continent
SHIFT L-Click to deselect one city or to select several specific cities
SHIFT R-Click while a city or multiple cities are selected to set a rally point
ALT L-Click a unit to build while a city is selected to create an infinite build queue.
CTRL + number- Saves a build queue in the city screen which you can then recall with the same number

Late game war becomes a lot easier to manage when you only use a few clicks to rally all cities to close to the front line and then set groups of them to produce certain types of units. Siege, land, air, etc. I usually leave several core cities off infinite unit queues to build specific things as needed. Also helps a lot if you accept that playing slightly sub-optimally is worth cutting 50% or more off your turn times!

Worth looking at civ 4 hotkeys in general. There are also easy ways to manage huge groups of units (including RTS style control groups) but I'm guilty of not using a lot of these.

https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/references/keyboard-shortcuts/

Hey, would you mind packaging some of your advice into a set of one or two sentence bites that I could include as loading screen hints? I think that's the best way to ingrain small information like this into people's minds and this is genuinely helpful information. I could extract this from your post myself but it would require some time to wrap my mind around it completely, and it would help a lot if you created the summary.

 

[Set]

I don't mind taking a shot at it but not sure about desired length/stlye/tone. Here's what I came up with:

Spoiler :

Tip for Managing a Large Empire: Use SHIFT + L-Click to select multiple specific cities at once and then SHIFT + R-Click to create a rally point for newly constructed units.

Tip for Managing a Large Empire: Try enabling minimize pop-ups in the settings. Pop-ups regarding what to build in cities will instead appear as buttons on the top right of the screen.

Tip for Managing a Large Empire: Use CTRL + L-Click to select all cities on a continent and then SHIFT + R-Click to create a rally point for newly constructed units.

Tip for Managing a Large Empire: After selecting multiple cities, use SHIFT + L-Click to deselect cities you don't want included in the selection.

Tip for Managing a Large Empire: Use ALT L-Click to set up an infinite production queue of units. Try this in the later stages of the game to simplify arrmy production.

Tip for Managing a Large Empire: City build queues can be saved using CTRL + a number key and then recalled by clicking the same number again.

Tip for Managing a Large Empire: Try setting a group of cities (SHIFT L-Click) to produce an infinite queue (ALT L-ClicK) of a specific unit you want (siege, stack defender, city attacker, naval etc.) and then SHIFT + R-Click to create a rally point for units constructed in those cities.

I used the prefix "Tip for Managing a Large Empire:" because at this point I don't really read the loading screen and changing the format of the tips like this(or even just writing NEW: or DOC TIP: as is already done for some tips I believe) might draw players' attention to new ones. On the other hand I could see it having the opposite effect if it makes tips too long. Easy to remove if you don't want it. For similar reasons I've included some repetition of tricks. More likely to stick in people's minds that way.

I've tried to include suggestions as to how to use the hotkeys in game since I was aware of hotkeys a long time before I started using them. I figured laying out how they might be immediately useful makes players more likely to start experimenting with them.

You could also just list the hotkeys in shorter tips though ie.

Spoiler :

Use SHIFT + L-Click to select multiple cities at once.

Use SHIFT + R-Click to create a rally point for newly constructed units.

Use CTRL + L-Click to select all cities on a continent.

Try enabling minimize pop-ups in the options screen. Pop-ups regarding what to build in cities will instead appear as buttons on the top right of the screen.

Build queues can be saved using CTRL + a number key and then recalled by clicking the same number again.

Use ALT L-Click to set up an infinite production queue of units

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for, thanks! I can take care of the formatting as long as I have the relevant information summarised.