King Younk's Questions thread

[King Younk]

What should be my worker to city ratio? In the early game? Late game? Should I delete workers once I'm fully settled?

 

[rah]

I usually stash my extras in my cap for later railroads into conquered territories. And never delete them. If you're going to do that you might as well used them to bait enemies out of their cities or direct their SODs.

 

[AcaMetis]

Around 1-1.5 workers per city at any stage of the game on normal speed, though you may need a few more here and there depending on how worker intensive your cities are (cities covered in jungle will definitely need extra workers to clear out the jungle within a reasonable amount of time, which is part of the reason why people recommend against settling jungle cities). Marathon, for reference, wants to at least double, preferably triple up on workers because everything takes so long to improve. Waiting 15 turns on a corn farm for a newly found city is not ideal. Three workers working together to get the corn up and running in 5 turns, however, is much more reasonable.

Once you're done with improvements just stash your workers for later, you'll need them to railroad/transition to a workshop economy/hook up a new resource here and there/repair sabotaged improvements/etc., and worst case, as rah pointed out, they make for excellent bait in war if you really don't need them anymore.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

AS was said above, you play on marathon so early on, you'll want more than what is typical. So you may end up making more workers earlier in the game than in a standard game, but you may not have to make anymore for a good long while after that. You can have your "swarm" move from city to city as you found them.

 

[King Younk]

I only just learned that settling on corn might be a good decision sometimes, even considering the fact that this will lose 2 potential food.

Can someone explain when it is or is not advantageous to settle directly on a resource, and what the implications of these moves are?

 

[AcaMetis]

Obviously it depends on a lot of factors. But as far as settling on Agriculture resources is concerned, you generally only settle on those if they're positioned in such a way that you must settle them in order to reach one or more Fishing resources, and even than there's a serious question of whether a 3 city tile is worth having to build a fishing boat and a lighthouse and possibly pop borders etc., so you might not even in that situation. Once in a blue moon you also might find a dry rice that can't be (easily/reasonably) irrigated surrounded by abundant food that no other cities can take advantage of, in that case you can make a case for settling the dry rice, but obviously that's very rare.

Actually, if you're settling a gift city for an AI and want to make that city as trash-tastic as possible you could do a lot worse than ruining a corn tile, I guess. But with gift cities it's usually better to aim for other factors than straight awfulness - it'll just be that much worse of a city that you'll inevitably conquer later, after all.

 

[Qactus]

You settle on a resource if you value the bonus to the city center higher than the tile improvement.
- Sugar and Bananas are really nice to settle on (+1F), mainly because plantations can't be built before calendar.
- Extra hammers from settling on marble, stone, plains elephants are really nice, mainly because the tile improvements are not especially desirable. Plus you gain quicker access to the resource
- In your case (corn) it is the opposite of both cases: The tile improvement is awesome plus it is available very early.

 

[coanda]

Reasons I might settle on a resource:

• The improvement is not that much better than just settling on the tile. A dry rice with no practical way of irrigating it is +2F if farmed, +1F if settled on. If there are other nice tiles to be working with the population instead, I might just settle on it.
• Resource improvement won't be unlocked for a while. Get some benefit earlier in the game. Common with something like Bananas.
• It's a strategic resource, and every turn matters. Improving the tile would take too long and risk derailing everything. If my whole plan hinges around hooking up a Stone for Pyramids, or connecting horses for a chariot rush, or something like that, and I can get it a half-dozen turns faster by dropping a settler on top of it, I might do that.
• There's a really weird coastline or AI cultural borders around the spot, such that settling on the resource actually leads to more good resources captured. Most often involving deep-water fish.
• I literally don't care how productive the city is, I'm just settling it for its strategic location on the map - beachhead, choke point, lightning rod, something like that.

I don't think I've ever settled on corn for one of the earlier reasons.

 

[6K Man]

In MP or Always War games, settling on a resource means it can't be pillaged. Useful for Copper/Horses/other key strategic resources.

Edit: Or blown up in a random event.

 

[5tephen]

Desert resources especially incense can be worth settling on if the spot is otherwise good for a city. Desert incense is a really bad tile but settling on it nets the resource and removes the horrible tile.

 

[shakabrade]

Settling the corn is ok in some HoF games or a gambit in competitive games where you already have other 4 food tiles. Settling the 5th will accelerate your first worker and you will be able to have additional net positive tile for total overkill and insane 6 to 4 whip cycles with max overflow. I would always try to dotmap the cities to share as much as possible in a normal game, but if you want the best start for some HoF conquest, settling the corn could be totally valid. Maybe HoF/xOTM players @WastinTime or @Kaitzilla would provide better insight as S&T players tend to be more conservative.

 

[dankok8]

In many games I settle on Stone because it really accelerates early wonder builds. Quarry takes 7 turns to build IIRC plus 2 turns for roading the tile so settling on it saves a lot of time. I often settle on Calendar resources like Banana or Sugar as well because it takes long to unlock the tech for those and yields aren't dramatically better with improvements.

 

[Orion Pax]

What folks said. Other little observations:

If you're a financial civ, a commerce resource on a river of course gives you your +2 bonus, without any improvement. So settling on that would give you 213. Which, early on is actually a nice little boost. Not that I'd seek out, but if that tile is the best location overall, you're not sacrificing much.

Also, later on one thing to watch for is if you've settled on oil and then reach Combustion, your cities will take a hit all of a sudden. That can catch one unaware if the oil was unnoticed / forgotten.

 

[King Younk]

Is there some way to attack with archery units? Which upgrades should I use?

 

[Zavior]

If you are boxed in with like 4 cities you can do longbows + trebs breakout as a last resort. With enough siege pretty much everything works. Obviously if you have metals you would actually use units suitable for the task.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

Is there some way to attack with archery units? Which upgrades should I use?

Of course you can do it. Typically, there is a better alternative available, so these are not very popular. But couple examples:

* very early on, an archer rush against a warrior-defended capital may be a good idea. As all in civ, it depends on how quickly you can get those archers (both tech and production-wise), how confident you are your target city will remain defended only by warriors, etc

* longbows are actually not bad at attacking, for example promoting along guerilla lane gives them a bonus attacking units in a hill city (e.g. regular archer). Longbows are also pretty good against axes, since axes cannot use their 50% against melee bonus.

So they are definitely situation where it makes sense - but typically it does not . Personally, I used Longbows for attack only in one of the GotMs, where scenario was that we were getting them at the beginning. Also if for whatever reason (scenario?) you suspect/know that getting metals/horses will be difficult/impossible.

In normal scenarios, I use few archers, LB to "mop up" after more powerful units. Since they then fight >98-99% I do not give them offensive promotions (they are winning anyway), but city garrison to defend conquered cities.

> which upgrades to use?

If possible, decide at the last moment, depending on the units attacked and city location (hill), as above

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Have merged three threads together and renamed it King Younk's Questions thread. I expect this thread to be used for all King Younk's questions about Civ4 Strategy. Please use this thread and stop spamming this forum.

 

[rah]

Don't forget the Chinese or Sitting Bull for archery type rushes.

 

[King Younk]

Don't forget the Chinese or Sitting Bull for archery type rushes.

Am crushing a game as Mao atm. Will space race victory in the next 200ish turns.

And they doubted me, haha!

 

[Fish Man]

Am crushing a game as Mao atm. Will space race victory in the next 200ish turns.

And they doubted me, haha!

This is marathon speed, right?

Post the turn 0 save and I guarantee you I can win the same map, by space, 200 turns or more faster. Since you're so adamant on not taking advice - yes, that's a challenge. Let me show you what you can truly accomplish with the proper technique.