[PTW] New City Build Order, Worker Mgmt and Railroads

[HEEL_caT666]

The potential-future-Metros would build whatever buildings you needed, including Factories, Power-plants, Hospitals, (Wonders) etc., all the way into the Modern Age. The Cities-to-disband-after-Sanitation are the ones where you'd be aiming not to build anything in them beyond the (needed!) generic Ancient buildings (Library, Courthouse, Aqueduct, Market, Barracks/Harbour), plus maybe a Uni (or certainly a Uni, if your Civ is Scientific!)

I guess a rule of thumb might be, in the Cities-to-disband-after-Sanitation, don't build any building that will cost you more than 100 shields -- though that in turn should not be taken to mean "Build all the buildings that cost less than 100 shields!".

Okay I see, thanks. That makes much more sense. In that case I can see how people can easily get to industrial age so early because they dont waste so much money on maintenance of buildings they dont need. I guess this tells me that I should pay more attention to each individual city and set the production according to their specific need. I also need to really read up on what all the buildings specifically do in order to judge if theyre worth it, that would really improve my gameplay a lot, thank you.

To the second, no you don't max. the LUX% slider instead! You just reduce the SCI%-slider to the minimum needed to still get the tech in 1 turn. If you have Scientists active already, their beakers alone may be enough to reduce SCI%-spending to zero and still get your tech

I see, that makes much more sense. I guess I must look after the sliders to for the extra opportunity gold.

However, if you find you that you now 'need' to run Specialists in most/all your core-towns to prevent riots, that's a pretty good indication that the LUX%-slider would be a better option.

I see, thanks. Ill take that into account when playing. I hear that on higher difficulties on Emperor mastering the Lux and Sci slider is a must, because of higher difficulty happiness.

But it should be set to the minimum needed to prevent riots, i.e. just enough to make sure that the unhappy citizens do not outnumber the happy ones (content citizens and Specialists can be ignored). You can get an overview of this in the Domestic Advisor (F1) screen.

Thats cool, thanks. Looks like im gonna be facing a lot of micro gameplay soon with all this minamixng

Your TAX% income is what's left over after SCI% and LUX% are subtracted from 100%, which means you can earn a cash-windfall at the end of every tech by minimising the SCI%-slider on the last turn, as described above. Due to the rounding involved, this windfall may be larger than the total cash you would have earned if you'd simply set the SCI%-slider at the minimum setting needed to get the tech in 4T.

I see, that method is more profitable. Thanks.

But with a Market, the happyfaces are multiplied, like this:

Lux1: +1 happyface, running total = 1
Lux2: +1 happyface, running total = 2
Lux3: +2 happyfaces, running total = 4
Lux4: +2 happyfaces, running total = 6
Lux5: +3 happyfaces, running total = 9
Lux6: +3 happyfaces, running total = 12
Lux7: +4 happyfaces, running total = 16
Lux8: +4 happyfaces, running total = 20

I did not know that! Again shows that I havent really looked into what a lot of the buildings do. This markets very important. Also highlights the need for a lot of lux early game, I guess scouting is hella important, because previously I did not pay it much attention.

First let me give you the maybe most important peace of advice: Please switch to C3C. I am really only competent on the later and in my opinion it is by far the better version.

I acutally have C3C on Steam, bought it quite a while ago for real cheap (even tho Civ 3 > any other civ game ) I only like to play on PTW because thats the one I used to play most on. The PTW game was actually bought a loong time ago by my mother in Ukraine (I play on the English version now but my first games were on Russian). We still have the original CD somewhere, but I just mount the ISO and run it like that, works like an absolute piece of cake. I'm pretty sure my uncle has the OG CD somewhere back in Ukraine. Idk why but I didnt really feel like playing on C3C at first, I was very unfamiliar with it.

That is typical mistake by people new to the game. Overcome it!

I will try my best!

In some cases it can be convenient to abandon before you have sanitation. That is because of the way corruption works. But that is a question for more advanced players. HEEL_caT666 needs to learn the basics first.

Yeah my corruption mechanics knowledge is very shallow, I need to read up on the War Academy first.

 

[justanick]

I did not know that! Again shows that I havent really looked into what a lot of the buildings do. This markets very important. Also highlights the need for a lot of lux early game, I guess scouting is hella important, because previously I did not pay it much attention.

Well, not so much in the early game, say before leaving despotism. When your cities are still small you donnot need lots of luxuries. In fact none may (barely) suffice.

Once your cities grow this changes. Then you should try to aquire luxuries. By that time its is not so much a matter of scouting(that ought to be done by then) but rather a matter of trading. Later it is a matter of aquiring the luxury goods for good through means of war.


At emperor the first citizen starts content. Every one after that starts discontent. In despotism you can have 2 units for military police, usually cheap warriors. So that enables a population of 3. If you want more you need luxury goods or the luxury slider. Once you enter anarchy you lose both military police and the lux slider. So this is when luxury goods start to become essential. Once you enter republic you regain the luxury slider, but not military police. At that time monarchy may still be slightly better than republic. But republic is way better long term and the cost of anarchy is huge. If you have to enter a second period of anarchy you likely made a big mistake at some point.

Yeah my corruption mechanics knowledge is very shallow, I need to read up on the War Academy first.

Corruption is well understood for C3C. PtW is very different.

 

[HEEL_caT666]

Started new game.

Absolutely disgusting. Look at those positions!

Technically that lil peninsula can support 4 metropolises, if Leipzig shuffled a long the the right a bit, and hamburg down a bit. and then to the right there is more space for expansion. Looks like late game ill have to demolish 3 of these cities to build 2 and make a metropolis land. This game is on Chieftian btw, I'm still a bit bad to graduate to Warlord imo. The Incas are there, traded starting tech with them, got masonry, dont see anything bad, will just accelerate my beeline to republic.

Tech tree looks like this. Uhm idk...

I got republic going top priority, and then afterwards I have construction lined up. I dont really see a problem with this as far as my skills go, when Berin reaches pop 6 I can just beaker farm it or build Wonders (which is what I'm doing right now). Leipzig is my settler farm, so minimal infra, dont think courthouse is needed cos its right near berlin and with republic that wont be needed much anyway. And then I can just delete it when I need. Those two cities there are more like unit builders, dont really know what for thought, I've got an okay military. Maybe dispand warriors to shields and replace with spearmen produced by those two cities, I guess, because I've got a good exploration party going on already. Fat gold reserves, 10x what AI has as of now but idk. Going strong with the strategies you guys gave me, looking forward to your guys feedback! Oh and btw, idk wherether I should research Mysticism and Polytheism, but I guess it's good for the wonders. But I'll research those after republic, thats top priority.

 

[HEEL_caT666]

Just second screen of surrounding area. Notice the furs, Im gonna be going for those, and the place with two sugar canes, Im gonna build ther too. God space for metropolis. Frankfurt I'd imagin I will abandon in favour of the better position more to the west with the gold and furs. Same for the city I will erect *for* those furs.I also plan to put a city in the square with the fish nex to it in the far right, and keep that metro.

 

[HEEL_caT666]

Building military instead helps to secure luxury goods and 8 luxuries goods combined with a market place give 20 happy faces, which is enough for metropolises.

But it is quite hard to manage happiness if you have virtually 0 luxuries. On the whole continent ther is only 2 - furs and incence. Nothing else at all. So in this case I'd say that building Temples and Colloseums is worth it, since it's hard to get a rein on the luxury slider when youre going downhill money-wise. Damn I hate democratic governments.

 

[HEEL_caT666]

UPDATE:

I'm on 270 BC now and all is going well. Im a republic with about 10 towns and I'm going strong. The 3 started cities are producing settlers like there is no tomorrow.

Just as a note to self (because I really am going to get lost in this complicated mess, so many settlers are walking round!) I made 3 plan images for future expansion of cities - buffer towns as well as future metropolises, plus ones I could do a tiny bit of beaker farming with in the end, placed purely so I dont waste any land. Have a look:

The only bad thing is that I'm struggling a bit with gold management - I'm loosing money! Hopefully these new cities will help with that.

 

[justanick]

But it is quite hard to manage happiness if you have virtually 0 luxuries. On the whole continent ther is only 2 - furs and incence. Nothing else at all. So in this case I'd say that building Temples and Colloseums is worth it, since it's hard to get a rein on the luxury slider when youre going downhill money-wise. Damn I hate democratic governments.

You are very wrong on this. Temples cost 1 gtp, but give only 1 happy face. That is not more than putting 1 uncorrupted base commerce on the luxury slider. Only after you have universities this changes. But by that time you might as well start building factories, provided that you have entered the industrial age, yet.

At some point you will want to build significants quantities of cavalry in order to conquer lands you were unable to capture with settlers.

You are building an expensive wonder before you have founded 20 cities? This is a major error.

Also building expensive archers and spearmen seems like an important error. Mere warriors do suffice. During despotimus you need mere quantities. Quality is supposed to follow after you have build barracks which you should not start building early on. Early on you need settlers, warriors and after that workers.

The cow should have been irrigated. You need to maximize your net food.

Also donnot forget the value of naval cities. It takes harbours and libraries for them to become fully productive, but naval tiles are rather valueable for research and they donnot require any worker action.


By the time you you leave despotism no land should be left unsettled. That can be different at chieftain, because AI is very slow. But you should not be getting cozy with being that slow yourself. Best move to regent, there AI has no mali or boni.

Or to make it short: Settlers, settlers and more settlers!

 

[need my speed]

In addition to that, I - by no means at all an expert player, certainly not! - question your logic for settling cities. Leipzig should have been a coastal city, next to the river. Konigsberg could be two cities, one on the northern coast and one on the southern coast. Why do you dislike coastal cities?

For one, this allows you to have more cities (and a city tile is the most useful tile out of all of them). For two, Leipzig will work water tiles anyway, but now can't build a Harbor and such to optimise these water tiles.

 

[HEEL_caT666]

You are very wrong on this. Temples cost 1 gtp, but give only 1 happy face. That is not more than putting 1 uncorrupted base commerce on the luxury slider. Only after you have universities this changes. But by that time you might as well start building factories, provided that you have entered the industrial age, yet.

Well I played through a bit more and found that youre right. I havent built a single temple, colloseum or cathedral yet and just have my luxury on 10%, and it work perfectly even for the capital, so I'm gonna stick to not building them. Plus, I'm about also to bring in a second luxury into the empire, so I could even set luxury to 0!

You are building an expensive wonder before you have founded 20 cities? This is a major error.

Well I dont see the problem really, because berlin has nothing else to build, and leipzig is gonna be my settler pump, so?

Also building expensive archers and spearmen seems like an important error. Mere warriors do suffice. During despotimus you need mere quantities. Quality is supposed to follow after you have build barracks which you should not start building early on. Early on you need settlers, warriors and after that workers.

Again Leipzig is my settler pump here, It's making quite a lot and those cities have nothing else to produce - making more warriors for no reason than to just explore seems like a waste to me. The rate at which 3-4 exploration warriors explore land is very high, and I wont be able to catch up settler wise anyway, so why bother?

The cow should have been irrigated. You need to maximize your net food.

Yeah looking at the fact that Frankfurt will be using a lot of hill tiles youre very right there.

In addition to that, I - by no means at all an expert player, certainly not! - question your logic for settling cities. Leipzig should have been a coastal city, next to the river. Konigsberg could be two cities, one on the northern coast and one on the southern coast. Why do you dislike coastal cities?

I dont really dislike them, the orginal city placement was just very bad on my side. I dont know why I did that, just something clicked in my head

 

[HEEL_caT666]

Here's an update of my current position. As you can see I've got quite a lot of towns and stuff, and I fixed my city placement on my original peninsula a bit. Still not perfect, I can see there is spaces that can be settled - one spot on my main peninsula and a couple in between Bonn and Stuttgart maybe.. - one between new nurenberg and hannover too.. - but right now I'm focused on obtaining the incense that's beyond Koenigsberg (the new old Koenigsberg, because the old Koenigsberg is gone! ), and my settlers are already moving there.

 

[justanick]

Well I dont see the problem really, because berlin has nothing else to build, and leipzig is gonna be my settler pump, so?

That is the problem. You should not build settlers in one town, you should build them in every town till there is no ground left to be settled. This is an example of how it should look in turn 80 (1000 BC):

Those are 19 towns, 10 workers and 6 warriors. Against AI you may want a few more warriors and i am not sure if such a tight city placement is wise in PtW. But but it gives a reasonably good idea what to do before anarchy.

 

[HEEL_caT666]

That is the problem. You should not build settlers in one town, you should build them in every town till there is no ground left to be settled.

Oh ok I see now. So like - first town build settler and then builds workers, then second town builds another settler, and then third town builds settler.... like this, in waves until all ground is settled?

This is an example of how it should look in turn 80 (1000 BC):

The link doesnt work. My German tells me it wants me to register

EDIT: Actually it says the link is invalid and to contact admin. My German is quite bad

 

[SuedecivIII]

>>You are building an expensive wonder before you have founded 20 cities? This is a major error.

I wouldn't agree with this piece of advice. Yes, building early wonders slows down your initial expansion phase. But the Pyramids is the one wonder where that's acceptable, because the granaries it gives are such a massive boost to growth. It allows you to catch back up, and the bigger the map, the more that is true.

Oh ok I see now. So like - first town build settler and then builds workers, then second town builds another settler, and then third town builds settler.... like this, in waves until all ground is settled?

It really depends on what you need, there's no hard and fast rule. But generally, commerce is corrupted, shields are corrupted, food is not. So the chief advantage to corrupt far away city is their food yields. So it makes sense to build workers and settlers in these cities.

I also notice you're wasting a lot of land here. There are 4 forest/grassland tiles south of Berlin not reachable by any city, plus a bunch of coast/sea tiles! These are good tiles. Close to the capital (so low distance corruption), and solid yields. Your primary goal should be to not waste tiles. Minimizing overlap is a secondary priority (if at all!)

You should know that "Optimal City Placement" is not necessarily optimal. There are advantages to tight placement. For example:

•Minimizing distance corruption early game.
•Cities are founded faster. Easier to snowball.
•More cities to hurry production from.
•More benefits from global effects (like luxury resources, wonders, and base city happiness).
•More unit maintenance.
•More uncorrupted city center tiles.
•Faster population growth, so you can access all available tiles faster.

I guess this might be different on the type of map you're playing. You have basically unlimited land, and the AI expands slowly on chieftain, so you won't really be punished for being wasteful. But you should get in the habit of using all the precious tiles you're given.

 

[justanick]

The link doesnt work.

OK, i uploaded the screenshot here, too. It should be visible now.

I wouldn't agree with this piece of advice. Yes, building early wonders slows down your initial expansion phase. But the Pyramids is the one wonder where that's acceptable, because the granaries it gives are such a massive boost to growth. It allows you to catch back up, and the bigger the map, the more that is true.

On a not too big map all towns to be founded are expected to be founded long before the Pyramids can be finished by regular means. The Pyramids are powerful, but only if you get them via SGL. 400 shields take forever.

 

[HEEL_caT666]

•Minimizing distance corruption early game.
•Cities are founded faster. Easier to snowball.
•More cities to hurry production from.
•More benefits from global effects (like luxury resources, wonders, and base city happiness).
•More unit maintenance.
•More uncorrupted city center tiles.
•Faster population growth, so you can access all available tiles faster.

Yes I agree these are all valid points but I'm the kinda guy to play all the way thru to space victory, so when I get sanitation I'd disband them, like tjs said. Most of these benefits apply to the early game anyway. Im not saying theyre invalid, theyre just not useful in the late game and in late game OCP is where it's at.

OK, i uploaded the screenshot here, too. It should be visible now.

Thanks, I see it now. Also what is it with you guys butchering your own city names? Those are some creative naming schemes xD

Also does anyone have any idea what happens if Civ runs out of city names (even the "New" ones)? New New Berlin? lmao

 

[SuedecivIII]

>Yes I agree these are all valid points but I'm the kinda guy to play all the way thru to space victory, so when I get sanitation I'd disband them, like tjs said. Most of these benefits apply to the early game anyway. Im not saying theyre invalid, theyre just not useful in the late game and in late game OCP is where it's at.

Yup absolutely! Play the playstyle you want, and also play the map you're given. If you're playing on big maps with few enemies this makes sense.

Sometimes I intentionally tell myself "I'm going to play the game X way". Like, skipping great library, or not doing any conquest. Playing particular ways helps you develop particular skills

 

[HEEL_caT666]

Sometimes I intentionally tell myself "I'm going to play the game X way". Like, skipping great library, or not doing any conquest. Playing particular ways helps you develop particular skills

Yeah as a new player im going to be doing this quite a lot

 

[need my speed]

Im not saying theyre invalid, theyre just not useful in the late game and in late game OCP is where it's at.

Sure, but note that the early game is massively, massively, massively, more important than the late game. One extra food in the early game can be worth thirty cities late game (random example ).
But hey, I don't play as good as I could either, I love building up my cities and filling them with useless buildings I don't need for one. So long as you're having fun, play however you want!

Also does anyone have any idea what happens if Civ runs out of city names (even the "New" ones)? New New Berlin? lmao

New Berlin 2, New Berlin 3, and so on.

 

[justanick]

Yes I agree these are all valid points but I'm the kinda guy to play all the way thru to space victory, so when I get sanitation I'd disband them, like tjs said. Most of these benefits apply to the early game anyway. Im not saying theyre invalid, theyre just not useful in the late game and in late game OCP is where it's at.

I somewhat disagree. If your goal is to get your spaceship on the way as early as possible, then you need to maximize your yields early, therefore enter the industrial age early and hence get railroads and sanitation early.

Also be aware that 4 turns per tech a threshold you cannot cross. So pending details hospitals will not help you at all to get your spaceship on the way early.

If you move on beyond emperor this changes because research becomes more expensive. But as AI will be more competetive before the industrial age you need a yield oriented settling scheme.

 

[CKS]

in late game OCP is where it's at.

I disagree. Spaceship games are my second favorite type (behind 20k), and pop-12 cities are ideally suited for this. I never research sanitation in a space race - that is 4 wasted turns. I'll trade for it sometimes, and there are some cities that will get hospitals, particularly coastal ones, but they are totally unnecessary for fast research or building spaceship parts. Plus, cleaning up pollution is a drag.

Games at deity and sid could be different, as I can't win on sid by spaceship, and I can't win deity by spaceship except by nearly wiping the AI out first.

If you like metropolises in the late game, go for them, but it isn't better than keeping to smaller cities.