just starting out

[elonin]

I've read and heard some advice about not having a large number of cities. I'm more used to civ 3 though i understand civ 4 is very different. How do you manage domination victories (ie by controlling large amounts of land?

I've seen some play through videos and people are putting down city markers (or notes). is this from the vanilla (non bts) game?

Is there a way to know if a city contains a wonder or such that would be destroyed if razed? I do like contigous borders but hate (to the point of wanting to raze) because of the random ways the ai drops them.

 

[Major Tom]

Welcome!
City markers is a part of the BUG mod for BTS. Highly recommend to install it.
When capturing a city you get an automatic option the have a look inside it before keeping or razing it.

Good luck!

 

[elonin]

I don't have BTS. To be honest I'm not sure if I want to go civ 5 or BTS. Civ 4 is alien enough to me.

Just how much expansion should I do?

Maybe I'm getting into an advanced topic, but how much effort do you put into streamlining cities? How do you identify merchant city from science city or great person farm? And how do you treat them differently?

 

[Major Tom]

Personally I dont put much effort in streamlining cities ( lazy emperor player ). Perhaps a GPP farm with plenty of food. Then a unit produser with the national epic. Play the map (stone, marble, food, horses or metal), take advantage what the map offers. Go for six cities and take it from there what victory you should aim for.

Recommend again BTS and BUG mod. Civ5 is shallow. Been there and returned to 4/BTS rather soon.

 

[elonin]

I'll admit that i'm pretty bad at judging how good the resources of an area will be. Also, is it compulsive that I save at the start of my first turn to make sure I have optimal city placement?

I've also noticed that there is no way to sacrifice cities in civ 4? Used to be that you could starve a city out.

 

[Tephros]

I've read and heard some advice about not having a large number of cities. I'm more used to civ 3 though i understand civ 4 is very different. How do you manage domination victories (ie by controlling large amounts of land?

I've seen some play through videos and people are putting down city markers (or notes). is this from the vanilla (non bts) game?

Is there a way to know if a city contains a wonder or such that would be destroyed if razed? I do like contigous borders but hate (to the point of wanting to raze) because of the random ways the ai drops them.

Spoilered to prevent a wall of text:

On Destroying Cities:

Spoiler :

Yes the biggest weakness of the AI is it chooses poorly in establishing cities and sometimes you have to consider whether it is better to accept the inferior position or raze and reestablish at the same time (or else another civ will just plop a city there shortly after you raze it).

When you capture a city, you can burn it to the ground, but otherwise even nuking a city 20 times won't destroy it. You can use slavery much like the Nazis did in real life, sacrificing the population to build things quickly. If you get a city you don't want from an enemy you can use slavery to convert the population into workers or whatever before gifting it to whoever wants it or allowing it to be captured.

Wonders:

Spoiler :

Method 1: When you capture a city, choose the "wait let me examine the city first" option, and look to see if a wonder is present, and what buildings survived you capturing the city. Disadvantage is you don't know ahead of time.

Method 2: There are a number of menu buttons in the upper right hand screen. One of them looks like a graph (info screen). Click on it. At the bottom of the menu that pops up you can choose graph, demographics, top 5 cities/wonders, etc.... choose the top 5 cities option. In some cases, the city with the wonder will be listed in the top 5. If not, I think if you've "seen" the city since the wonder was built, it should be listed on the right (unknown if you don't know the civ who built it, and just the civ name if you haven't seen where).

Method 3: If you can see a city, you can zoom in on it and see the buildings in it (if you can't see it, it'll be like it was when you last saw it). It helps to toggle bare map (Ctrl+B) to see stuff. Wonders are some of the more recognizable buildings you will see.

Ideal number of cities:

Spoiler :

Cities have a maintenance cost based upon distance to capital and number of cities you control, along with colonial expenses if you have overseas cities on the same landmass. This becomes mitigated as you become more technologically advanced: e.g. being able to build courthouses can halve this cost, state property civic can eliminate the distance and colonial components, currency/castles/etc. will increase trade money from each city. So once you have things like that, larger empires will do better than small ones. For research purposes, quality of cities will matter more than quantity.

For a domination game the only reason you'd limit your expansion is to not tank your research, and that only applies to the early game where you can't do things like "build" research or wealth. But it's often worth it to tank your research temporarily to have a bigger empire later.

Overall though, you just don't want to establish cities for the purpose of establishing cities. Unless you're grabbing that last 0.5% for a domination victory, established cities should be anticipated to give you some benefit in production, commerce, or resources.

I only play huge maps, and in that context the smallest empires will probably be for cultural victories. The ideal size of that empire is at least 12 cities by the end because of how many temples are needed per cathedral, and 3 cities need legendary culture. Space race victories are a more medium sized empire, with expansion occurring only for the purpose of increased commerce. Diplomatic seems to work best by being really aggressive as part of a coalition against another coalition and/or having lots of vassals. And of course domination means your entire goal is to control over half the map.

Markers: Without mods, if you zoom out into a sort of space view (wheel on the mouse on my computer), the buttons on the bottom right will change to include the strategy layer button. With that button, you can freehand write on the map, as well as place signs. I think it was in vanilla, but I don't think I started using it until BTS so not sure. Overall I recall I thought BTS was a big improvement.

 

[elonin]

Yea, the ai has placed cities poorly through every version of the game if I understand correctly. In civ 3 games I've had to post a troop at the one odd area that wasn't bordered.

When i defeat a city I only see 2 options (establish a new governor or burn baby burn). Didn't think about checking the history.

I had the impression that the changes between 3 and 4 meant a much smaller game. I'll admit that i'm used to putting down cities everywhere just to keep the ai from geting land. Can't remember the version but there was a civ with underwater cities. Not sure but you put down tubes then settled cities down there.

I'll see if I can get the sign option to work. I guess the mod talked about shows the city cross.

 

[lymond]

Get BTS! Civ V is for pansies...seriously though the game sucks pigeon pellets

BTS with BUG or BAT and your set. BUG has the dot-mapping tool. Otherwise you can just post signs --- or draw them in strategy view, which i find a bit cumbersome.

3 and 4 are very different games. There's an article in the War Academy where a guy kind of jokingly goes over some of the basic differences.

Otherwise though, just throw everything out the window so to speak and prepare to learn the game anew.

IV does punish you a bit more for expansion/conquest, but it by no means precludes you from getting large. It just takes more strategy and skill with the game, which is very much a good thing. Civ IV is a thinking man's game.

 

[Lennier]

As I recall, Civ III's curruption mechanic made adding cities to large empires to be worthless, basically punishing you for getting too big. Which wouldn't have been too bad if the AI would leave you alone at that point.

In Civ IV, the maintenance mechanic limits the size of your empire early, with later technological developments letting you generate enough commerce to pay for a larger empire, thus letting the AIs have a chance to establish an empire.

 

[elonin]

I haven't been able to figure out how to post signs.

3 did punish you for too far away from capitol. Mostly made those to secure landmass. Not for a domination victory just to keep the others from setting up shop. I've said it before, but can't stand how the ai will just haphazardly build cities.

 

[DrCron]

I haven't been able to figure out how to post signs.

Click Alt+S, that's it. You don't need to install any mods to be able to do this. I think it works in Vanillla too (it definitely works in BTS without mods).

 

[6K Man]

I’m pretty sure it was one of the BtS patches that enabled the option to look inside a city before deciding whether to raze it. So you won’t get that option in Vanilla… which will force you to either go back to the game log (Alt+Tab) to see what was built where, or try to spot wonders in a city before you attack it, or use the Wonders/Top 5 Cities screen.

Cities that never grew past size 1 will auto-raze without giving you the option to keep them. I’d keep any captured AI cities with a decent number of resources (At least 1 food, plus a luxury or metal, and/or riverside hamlets/villages), of a decent size (4+) in the early going. AI Capitals are almost always worth keeping. Otherwise, depending on how well your economy is going, you can have anywhere up to a dozen cities before learning Currency at Noble, Prince or Monarch difficulty and get by. If you are struggling to keep your research rate up at that level, you should consider researching Currency, building Wealth (or Science, after you learn Writing), running Scientist specialists, building Great Lighthouse, etc.

Streaming cities is done by looking at the terrain, and if necessary, the need. A city with some food resources and lots of hills, forests, or production resources is probably a production or military city. A city with lots of grassland riverside or floodplains could be a cottage/commerce city. A city with lots of food resources and little else could be a great person ranch.

 

[elonin]

Thanks for the tips. This is likely a petty thing, but sometimes when I capture a city I just can't stand the placement.

 

[Lexicus]

It's mostly petty, but occasionally (when they settled one tile away from the river or coast, or from having 2 extra resources in the fat cross) it can be worthwhile to raze and resettle the city in the better spot.

I hate when the AI does this, cities one tile away from rivers and the coast are so annoying to look at, let alone to hold yourself

 

[elonin]

I'm thinking more to civ 3 but it still applies to 4 and I can't stand missing 2 good cities or good city layout. Seriously I've had the ai lay a city down when there was a gap of 1 square. I'll admit that i likely don't have a good knack of what a good city spot is. It doesn't help when you are putting down cities to grab resources or luxeries. My best example for this is furs on tundra or oil (admittedly a late game resource)

 

[benitorios]

I'll see if I can get the sign option to work. I guess the mod talked about shows the city cross.

As someone else wrote, in order to put down signs, press Alt+S. But I think you're looking for the option to add entire BFC overlays on the map, which I only found out accidentally today: using BUG mod, press Alt+X then you can put down city markers/BFC overlays in various colors. And you can toggle those overlays on/off using Ctrl+X (BUG mod calls this the strategy layer I think)

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk

 

[Tephros]

It's mostly petty, but occasionally (when they settled one tile away from the river or coast, or from having 2 extra resources in the fat cross) it can be worthwhile to raze and resettle the city in the better spot.

I hate when the AI does this, cities one tile away from rivers and the coast are so annoying to look at, let alone to hold yourself

I do wonder why they settle the way they do. I've always suspected part of it is that the computer knows the values of the tiles in terms of oil, uranium, aluminum from the beginning and will settle a city based upon getting those resources in the fat cross even if it makes absolutely no difference for the next 4000 years. They also don't seem to consider what other cities are using, theirs or mine, but some seem to hesitate to settle close to my borders more than others. Gandhi seems to think he can bully anybody with his culture so will put his cities right next to the border of your highest culture city. And that's why I love destroying him.

 

[Lexicus]

I've always suspected part of it is that the computer knows the values of the tiles in terms of oil, uranium, aluminum from the beginning and will settle a city based upon getting those resources in the fat cross even if it makes absolutely no difference for the next 4000 years.

I think you're right, I'm pretty sure the AI simply settles on spots that are "recommended" (visible to you as blue circles on certain tiles when you have your own settlers). IIRC those recommended city spots take into account all resources including ones you don't have the technology to see yet.

It is almost never optimal play for the human to settle in these locations.