[BTS] I Think I Messed Up

[Knightfall]

Trying out Civ IV again after a long break, and I find myself floundering yet again. I'm going for a Science Victory as Sumeria, and am now about halfway through the game, but I seem to be falling behind in almost every metric, and I can't see any way of arresting the decline. With that in mind, I'm attaching my most recent save to this post. I'm not so much interested in receiving guidance or specific advice so much as I am in seeing if anyone can tell me what I've been doing wrong and if this game is even still salvageable.

 

[lymond]

This thread is really better suited for the Strategy & Tips forum.

There is a huge myriad of problems with your game but it is really difficult to give advice in such a late stage of the game. One point I will make clear though is that the early game is the most important and you don't seem to fair well in that stage. Also, for sake of perspective, your timings or benchmarks here are not good at all. Education? Oxford? Liberalism? All these things should be behind you at least a 1000 years ago or so. (well, on Noble you can usually hold onto Liberalism for a later more expensive tech...later as in still way before 1700AD) Churchill will beat you to Liberalism here likely so no point in teching it.

A few pointers I can see:

1) Big mistake not getting Mids with stone right in your cap for early Representation. Great Wall? bleck (use it for fail gold) Scotland Yard?! fooeey
2) Lagash is misplaced
3) I estimate probably 5 to 6 or more additional cities on this landmass..settled much earlier. (every food resource is a city) Nibru placement bad. There's 3 cities at least right there.
4) This is an iso situation. Early Astronomy would be the focus here.
5) Caste System not doing you much right now. Something you would run temporarily in an earlier golden age (maybe using that great spy or the great artists from Music if you got that) [ Although, relatively speaking you might be running caste at this stage of the game if you had whipped your unis much earlier)
6) Merc okay I guess in current situation with no foreign trade routes, but once you get them you want to be out of that. Usually something you only might run in a Golden Age.
7) Not sure why that settler is just sitting there.
8) You build a lot of unnecessary buildings.
9) you need to assess what your workers are doing. Lots of unimproved land and cities working bad tiles or the wrong tiles. Look at what your cities/citizens are doing. There should basically be no forests left on this landmass at this point.
10) Odd specialists you are running that don't help you win.
11) Look to trade old unimportant techs for gold..you should always be checking for that.

It's Noble though, you can still win this with some focus. You need to be outta caste so you can whip unis. Build Ox and Palace in Lagash. Uruk can whip forge into Taj and chop it ..max hammers. Another golden age will help and save 2 gps for extended golden age. Send chariot from Eridu to Lagash..viola!

Attaching a save where I made some adjustments - getting gold and getting Lib to 4 turns so maybe you can win it and take Astro. Then switch to slavery and do some whippage.

(By the way, you can install BUG/BULL in custom assets such that you don't have to load the mod and others can load it easily. Luckily I have it installed both ways)

 

[Knightfall]

This thread is really better suited for the Strategy & Tips forum.

There is a huge myriad of problems with your game but it is really difficult to give advice in such a late stage of the game. One point I will make clear though is that the early game is the most important and you don't seem to fair well in that stage. Also, for sake of perspective, your timings or benchmarks here are not good at all. Education? Oxford? Liberalism? All these things should be behind you at least a 1000 years ago or so. (well, on Noble you can usually hold onto Liberalism for a later more expensive tech...later as in still way before 1700AD) Churchill will beat you to Liberalism here likely so no point in teching it.

A few pointers I can see:

1) Big mistake not getting Mids with stone right in your cap for early Representation. Great Wall? bleck (use it for fail gold) Scotland Yard?! fooeey
2) Lagash is misplaced
3) I estimate probably 5 to 6 or more additional cities on this landmass..settled much earlier. (every food resource is a city) Nibru placement bad. There's 3 cities at least right there.
4) This is an iso situation. Early Astronomy would be the focus here.
5) Caste System not doing you much right now. Something you would run temporarily in an earlier golden age (maybe using that great spy or the great artists from Music if you got that) [ Although, relatively speaking you might be running caste at this stage of the game if you had whipped your unis much earlier)
6) Merc okay I guess in current situation with no foreign trade routes, but once you get them you want to be out of that. Usually something you only might run in a Golden Age.
7) Not sure why that settler is just sitting there.
8) You build a lot of unnecessary buildings.
9) you need to assess what your workers are doing. Lots of unimproved land and cities working bad tiles or the wrong tiles. Look at what your cities/citizens are doing. There should basically be no forests left on this landmass at this point.
10) Odd specialists you are running that don't help you win.
11) Look to trade old unimportant techs for gold..you should always be checking for that.

It's Noble though, you can still win this with some focus. You need to be outta caste so you can whip unis. Build Ox and Palace in Lagash. Uruk can whip forge into Taj and chop it ..max hammers. Another golden age will help and save 2 gps for extended golden age. Send chariot from Eridu to Lagash..viola!

Attaching a save where I made some adjustments - getting gold and getting Lib to 4 turns so maybe you can win it and take Astro. Then switch to slavery and do some whippage.

(By the way, you can install BUG/BULL in custom assets such that you don't have to load the mod and others can load it easily. Luckily I have it installed both ways)

1. Yeah, that was a mistake. The Great Wall was because I wanted an early wonder, it was cheap, and I felt it went with the "Protective" trait. Also, I have a weird tendency to spawn next to hyper-aggressive civs like Zulu, Mongolia, or Vikings, so I've developed a bit of a bad habit of over-building defenses early in the game.
2. I put Lagash there mainly to get Gems and Dye to solve a happiness crunch.
3. Didn't know that. The problem I have is after 4-5 cities I have to stop expanding because I'm going bankrupt due to maintenance overruns.
4. I thought of doing that, but I wound thinking along the lines of "Sumeria is not a naval civ, so do not research naval techs."
5. Definitely. Should have probably stuck with Slavery a little longer.
6. Exactly. Right now everyone is on their own continent and no one has Astronomy, so foreign trade essentially does not exist.
7. Was going to found a city on that spot next turn.
8. That seems to be a consistent problem of mine. I always thought that you want to have all Food, Health, and Happiness buildings in every city in order to maximize growth. Now I'm starting to see that this isn't true.
9. That seems to be another consistent problem of mine. The Forest thing was to try to minimize Health penalties.
10. Could you explain this one a little bit more? As I understand it, your specialists should match your city specialization, so Merchants and Scientists in Commerce cities, Engineers and Generals in Production cities, and Artists, Prophets, and Spies and Food/GP cities.
11. Definitely.

I remember you helped me the last time. Thank you for still helping me to improve.

Moderator Action: Moved to S&T as requested. Good luck and keep up the good work. leif

 

[lymond]

"and I felt it went with the "Protective" trait"......"Sumeria is not a naval civ, so do not research naval techs.

Will answer each item but parsing out a coupla comments here for emphasis. What you indicate here is more in line with "roleplay" type play. Otherwise, it is total bupkis..it's nonsense. You learn optimal gameplay and mechanics and play the map.

1. Yeah, that was a mistake. The Great Wall was because I wanted an early wonder, it was cheap, and I felt it went with the "Protective" trait. Also, I have a weird tendency to spawn next to hyper-aggressive civs like Zulu, Mongolia, or Vikings, so I've developed a bit of a bad habit of over-building defenses early in the game.

Wonders have a purpose. They either give you a powerful early benefit or you put bonus hammers into them for fail gold. Great Wall with stone is great for fail gold..it is good for nothing else. 2 Wonders obviously work well here - Mids and GLH. And since it is Noble, Oracle something is pretty easy without even trying.

I never build walls except in an emergency they are an easy 2pop whip, but not sure what GW has to do with that anyway.

2. I put Lagash there mainly to get Gems and Dye to solve a happiness crunch.

Lagash itself is not bad...good Bureau cap option (although may be other places too). Problem is you orphaned a strong food resource. A city should have been on coast there for the fish. As mentioned Nibru spot could be 3 cities easily.

3. Didn't know that. The problem I have is after 4-5 cities I have to stop expanding because I'm going bankrupt due to maintenance overruns.

This is problem one of the harder things less experience players need to learn. How to balance economy with expansion. With that said maintenance is less severe on Noble. Just wait until you play higher levels. Cottages and trade routes help you fund expansion. Not sure if you discussed this previously or you implemented it but you should use the 100/0 % research guideline. Once you have Currency you are golden. GLH here means settle everything asap.

Lastly, your economy is probably not as bad as you think it is

4. I thought of doing that, but I wound thinking along the lines of "Sumeria is not a naval civ, so do not research naval techs."

see above. Astro bulbing is goto ploy in iso situations.

5. Definitely. Should have probably stuck with Slavery a little longer.

I'm not sure when and why you switch civics or out of slavery. I noted that it appeared you ran a Golden Age at some point, so maybe you did then and forgot to switch out. Slavery is powerful for a high percentage of most games. Space may be an exception since you enter late stages with various increases to natural production....and you grow cities large.
[

7. Was going to found a city on that spot next turn.

ha..i thought it odd that bfc was better improved than many of your other cities yet no city was there.

8. That seems to be a consistent problem of mine. I always thought that you want to have all Food, Health, and Happiness buildings in every city in order to maximize growth. Now I'm starting to see that this isn't true.

overbuilding is a very common problem among newer players. Granted, again, in a Space game you may eventually build a few things to grow larger but your natural production skyrockets as well with workshops and State Property, and Factories.

9. That seems to be another consistent problem of mine. The Forest thing was to try to minimize Health penalties.

Forests help you expand early and maybe get those coveted wonders. Worrying about health is helping win the game.

10. Could you explain this one a little bit more? As I understand it, your specialists should match your city specialization, so Merchants and Scientists in Commerce cities, Engineers and Generals in Production cities, and Artists, Prophets, and Spies and Food/GP cities.

Not sure where you got that idea. Specialists match what you need to win. GSs usually the focus early for bulbing, like Lib path or ..in this case...even Astro path. Later GMs increase in value as GS bulbing loses value and running trade missions more important. Running a GE here and there ain't bad, but all the others are crap unless you have a specific purposes. But don't pollute the gene pool in cities until you acquire what you need.

I would never run artists at all except in a culture game. Great Spies are crap. Although any odd great person you might produce can be used for golden ages...but usually those pop randomly from some wonder you built or captured.

I remember you helped me the last time. Thank you for still helping me to improve.

I vaguely do recall this. I did not do a very good job


Overall, your game needs a lot of work. You really need to take it back to the basics and learn how to successfully manage and conduct the early stages of the game. Basically once you get comfortable with strong early gameplay you can do anything with a game. And just for perspective, on Noble level, with just getting a few concepts under your belt, you should absolutely blow the AI away in every respect. I mean..let me put it this way...in this game - with maybe the exception of Archery, Theology (why did you tech that?) and Divine Right which are all techs I never tech - you should be light years ahead of the AI tech.

It seems you have some preconceived ideas about this game or learn some things somewhere that were not all that helpful. My point is you will totally rethink how you play.

 

[Knightfall]

Will answer each item but parsing out a coupla comments here for emphasis. What you indicate here is more in line with "roleplay" type play. Otherwise, it is total bupkis..it's nonsense. You learn optimal gameplay and mechanics and play the map.




Wonders have a purpose. They either give you a powerful early benefit or you put bonus hammers into them for fail gold. Great Wall with stone is great for fail gold..it is good for nothing else. 2 Wonders obviously work well here - Mids and GLH. And since it is Noble, Oracle something is pretty easy without even trying.

I never build walls except in an emergency they are an easy 2pop whip, but not sure what GW has to do with that anyway.


Lagash itself is not bad...good Bureau cap option (although may be other places too). Problem is you orphaned a strong food resource. A city should have been on coast there for the fish. As mentioned Nibru spot could be 3 cities easily.


This is problem one of the harder things less experience players need to learn. How to balance economy with expansion. With that said maintenance is less severe on Noble. Just wait until you play higher levels. Cottages and trade routes help you fund expansion. Not sure if you discussed this previously or you implemented it but you should use the 100/0 % research guideline. Once you have Currency you are golden. GLH here means settle everything asap.

Lastly, your economy is probably not as bad as you think it is

see above. Astro bulbing is goto ploy in iso situations.

I'm not sure when and why you switch civics or out of slavery. I noted that it appeared you ran a Golden Age at some point, so maybe you did then and forgot to switch out. Slavery is powerful for a high percentage of most games. Space may be an exception since you enter late stages with various increases to natural production....and you grow cities large.
[
ha..i thought it odd that bfc was better improved than many of your other cities yet no city was there.

overbuilding is a very common problem among newer players. Granted, again, in a Space game you may eventually build a few things to grow larger but your natural production skyrockets as well with workshops and State Property, and Factories.

Forests help you expand early and maybe get those coveted wonders. Worrying about health is helping win the game.

Not sure where you got that idea. Specialists match what you need to win. GSs usually the focus early for bulbing, like Lib path or ..in this case...even Astro path. Later GMs increase in value as GS bulbing loses value and running trade missions more important. Running a GE here and there ain't bad, but all the others are crap unless you have a specific purposes. But don't pollute the gene pool in cities until you acquire what you need.

I would never run artists at all except in a culture game. Great Spies are crap. Although any odd great person you might produce can be used for golden ages...but usually those pop randomly from some wonder you built or captured.



I vaguely do recall this. I do not do a very good job


Overall, your game needs a lot of work. You really need to take it back to the basics and learn how to successfully manage and conduct the early stages of the game. Basically once you get comfortable with strong early gameplay you can do anything with a game. And just for perspective, on Noble level, with just getting a few concepts under your belt, you should absolutely blow the AI away in every respect. I mean..let me put it this way...in this game - with maybe the exception of Archery, Theology (why did you tech that?) and Divine Right which are all techs I never tech - you should be light years ahead of the AI tech.

It seems you have some preconceived ideas about this game or learn some things somewhere that were not all that helpful. My point is you will totally rethink how you play.

Again, very helpful advice. I guess the main cause of my issues is that I came here from CIV V/VI, so I'm used to thinking in those terms (go tall, play to your civ, not the map, etc.) I'm now starting to realize what I've been doing wrong here. Among other things, it would seem that my basic problems are:
- Overbuilding; wasting Production and time on things I don't really need (ex. Great Wall).
- Not building enough cities due to fear of maintenance and overlap.
- Not adapting to the map and the circumstances of the game. When I realized I was in an iso, I should have beelined to Astronomy to get international trade going.
- Not putting cities in optimal locations and not making optimal use of Food resources.
- Improperly managing specialists and the various Commerce sliders. Science should bet at either 100% to quickly get techs, or at 0% to build up Gold reserves.
- Following a rigid, pre-determined plan that doesn't allow for adaptation.

 

[lymond]

- Overbuilding; wasting Production and time on things I don't really need (ex. Great Wall).

'
Well, Great Wall is a wonder. You have stone. There's no reason you can't put some hammers into it for fail gold in various cities. I usually do it after completion of a build to take the little overflow hammers and double it. All that becomes gold later when it is completed.

The point here is that there really is only one true building that is vital - the Granary (and in some cases that may not be needed in low food cities, but you usually want) High food/commerce cities get libraries and well you want at least one very early to start generating your first GS. Forges are nice too, but otherwise everything else is situational. Otherwise, build worker/settlers or research/wealth, or put hammers into wonders for fail gold.

- Not building enough cities due to fear of maintenance and overlap.

Well,overlap is certainly a good thing and learning how to take advantage of it. As for early maintenance it is about finding a balance and learning how to manage things. Accumulating gold helps fund expansion too while you get up libraries.

- Not adapting to the map and the circumstances of the game. When I realized I was in an iso, I should have beelined to Astronomy to get international trade going.

Good point to grasp, but realize that your settings caused that situation. Iso situations are something to learn but a rarer encounter. While learning I suggest sticking to maps like Pangaea where iso does not factor, so you can really learn the finer details of the early game including diplo. You can always branch out to other stuff later.

- Not putting cities in optimal locations and not making optimal use of Food resources.

Food is almost always your target for settling cities, with the exception of a strat resource or a gold/gem tile early. Civ IV is all about food. FOOD is KING in this game.

- Improperly managing specialists and the various Commerce sliders. Science should bet at either 100% to quickly get techs, or at 0% to build up Gold reserves.

Well, other than research slider you are really not going to touch the other sliders unless in a culture game. In advance games there may be times you might tweak espionage a tad but that is far advance for you at this stage and should be "out of mind".

Yeah, basically once you settle your first city you start deficit research. At that point you go 0% until you can fund the next tech. Then after Writing, when you start hitting the bigger techs, you go 0% for a while as you get up your libraries or a library.

- Following a rigid, pre-determined plan that doesn't allow for adaptation.

Interesting point that I don't believe I addressed directly myself but maybe you gleaned from my discussion. There are certain basic concepts that you can follow, but ultimately you do play the map and you do have to adapt to every changing dynamics. I this case, iso is somewhat straightforward as you don't know the AIs for quite a long time. You can't trade techs or trade for gpt or gold. You don't fight wars and only really have to worry about possible barb problems unless you can pretty much eliminate that with proper spawnbusting. So your focus is rather linear for the most part for some time. Expand>grab good land>maybe a wonder or two>libraries>scientists>research your way to optics and astro..which you can pretty much bulb all that.

 

[Knightfall]

'
Well, Great Wall is a wonder. You have stone. There's no reason you can't put some hammers into it for fail gold in various cities. I usually do it after completion of a build to take the little overflow hammers and double it. All that becomes gold later when it is completed.

The point here is that there really is only one true building that is vital - the Granary (and in some cases that may not be needed in low food cities, but you usually want) High food/commerce cities get libraries and well you want at least one very early to start generating your first GS. Forges are nice too, but otherwise everything else is situational. Otherwise, build worker/settlers or research/wealth, or put hammers into wonders for fail gold.


Well,overlap is certainly a good thing and learning how to take advantage of it. As for early maintenance it is about finding a balance and learning how to manage things. Accumulating gold helps fund expansion too while you get up libraries.

Good point to grasp, but realize that your settings caused that situation. Iso situations are something to learn but a rarer encounter. While learning I suggest sticking to maps like Pangaea where iso does not factor, so you can really learn the finer details of the early game including diplo. You can always branch out to other stuff later.


Food is almost always your target for settling cities, with the exception of a strat resource or a gold/gem tile early. Civ IV is all about food. FOOD is KING in this game.

Well, other than research slider you are really not going to touch the other sliders unless in a culture game. In advance games there may be times you might tweak espionage a tad but that is far advance for you at this stage and should be "out of mind".

Yeah, basically once you settle your first city you start deficit research. At that point you go 0% until you can fund the next tech. Then after Writing, when you start hitting the bigger techs, you go 0% for a while as you get up your libraries or a library.


Interesting point that I don't believe I addressed directly myself but maybe you gleaned from my discussion. There are certain basic concepts that you can follow, but ultimately you do play the map and you do have to adapt to every changing dynamics. I this case, iso is somewhat straightforward as you don't know the AIs for quite a long time. You can't trade techs or trade for gpt or gold. You don't fight wars and only really have to worry about possible barb problems unless you can pretty much eliminate that with proper spawnbusting. So your focus is rather linear for the most part for some time. Expand>grab good land>maybe a wonder or two>libraries>scientists>research your way to optics and astro..which you can pretty much bulb all that.

- I think I'm starting to get that most buildings are situational. For example, don't build a Barracks unless that city is going to be churning out a lot of military units. What about Courthouses though? I've been told many times that Courthouses should be in almost every city in order to help cut maintenance costs.
- I need to learn to use deficit research. Culture, only fund if going for a Cultural Victory or maybe to quickly pop borders to get an important resource. Espionage is more advanced.

 

[sampsa]

What about Courthouses though? I've been told many times that Courthouses should be in almost every city in order to help cut maintenance costs.

I play deity and I almost never build a courthouse. It's not a horrible building per se, but usually there is something better available (units, wealth, failgold).

- I need to learn to use deficit research. Culture, only fund if going for a Cultural Victory or maybe to quickly pop borders to get an important resource. Espionage is more advanced.

You get very far by ignoring and -sliders and going only 0% or 100% slider.

 

[lymond]

Who tells you these things

Anyway, yeah, using culture slider for borders pops is highly inefficient.

 

[Knightfall]

I play deity and I almost never build a courthouse. It's not a horrible building per se, but usually there is something better available (units, wealth, failgold).

You get very far by ignoring and -sliders and going only 0% or 100% slider.

Who tells you these things

Anyway, yeah, using culture slider for borders pops is highly inefficient.

As I said earlier, I'm coming from CIV V/VI, so I have a bad tendency to play this game as if it was those. The impression I'm starting to get is that, for this game, beginning players can/should more or less ignore everything except expansion, Research, buildings, and Gold.

 

[sampsa]

The impression I'm starting to get is that, for this game, beginning players can/should more or less ignore everything except expansion, Research, buildings, and Gold.

You should ignore most buildings, too. Granary is great, many others not so great.

However, this is a very complex game. I guess many things are not very intuitive, as many of the game mechanics are not easy to grasp. Anyway, building settlers/workers, improving food, getting granaries up, building cottages will get you far.

 

[Knightfall]

What would you say is the easiest victory condition for a beginner? Most people seem to say Conquest/Domination because its the most straightforward.

 

[lymond]

What would you say is the easiest victory condition for a beginner? Most people seem to say Conquest/Domination because its the most straightforward.

Honestly,, my recommendation is not to think in terms of victory conditions for the time being. Just focus on learning good early game mechanics right now. You currently play on Noble so any VC is easy. Conq/Dom is probably the quickest option, but nothing will be easy for you until you learn a few things and practice. Then it will be very easy on this level.

Look for an easy VC, easy settings, easy leader to play, or easy leaders to play against? None of these things actually help you learn.

 

[Anysense]

None of these things actually help you learn.

When you know very little it makes sense to simplify things. Besides, playing to Religous/Diplo/Space victory consciously requires fairly profound knowledge of every aspect of the game, which is well beyond a Noble level player's immediate reach. So, aiming at Conquest or Domination must be sensible? Probably, not. I think you are qute right that in this case it would be much better to focus on learning basics and game mechanichs and put thoughts about victory conditions away for a while. That is learning how to use the tools before you get into real work.

 

[Knightfall]

Honestly,, my recommendation is not to think in terms of victory conditions for the time being. Just focus on learning good early game mechanics right now. You currently play on Noble so any VC is easy. Conq/Dom is probably the quickest option, but nothing will be easy for you until you learn a few things and practice. Then it will be very easy on this level.

Look for an easy VC, easy settings, easy leader to play, or easy leaders to play against? None of these things actually help you learn.

When you know very little it makes sense to simplify things. Besides, playing to Religous/Diplo/Space victory consciously requires fairly profound knowledge of every aspect of the game, which is well beyond a Noble level player's immediate reach. So, aiming at Conquest or Domination must be sensible? Probably, not. I think you are qute right that in this case it would be much better to focus on learning basics and game mechanichs and put thoughts about victory conditions away for a while. That is learning how to use the tools before you get into real work.

Thanks, got it.