[BTS] New guy with a couple questions

[jabbyman]

I've been lurking these forums for years. I've played civ3,civ4 and civ5. But nothing drew me in as much as civ4 with its seemingly infinite possibilities for the win and complexity. I've learned a hell of a lot from reading discussions here and from watching absolutezero's videos, but I feel even though I win all the time on noble I'm most likely not doing the most optimal things. (I really only play noble because I dislike the idea of the computer having an unfair advantage, it should be on equal terms, the computer should probably be smarter though.

Anyway, I've seen people upload game saves here... If I upload an end game save, can you guys see from that my every move in the past? I feel I've got a semi good grasp of whipping, optimal tech path etc, but maybe I've got it all wrong.

My other question was on optimal building order. Assuming I have all the tech for important buildings in a new city, also assuming a good food source and a couple hills, what is the best build order? Right now I go monument (if needed), granary, forge, courthouse, library, barracks, stable and in coastal cities, I go monument (if needed), granary, lighthouse, forge, courthouse, harbor, library, barracks, stable

 

[AcaMetis]

If I upload an end game save, can you guys see from that my every move in the past?

Negative. For that you'd want to post a shadow game.

As for optimal building order, it largely depends on the situation, but as a general rule you'll want to build Wealth or wonders for failgold more often than buildings like a Courthouse.

 

[duckstab]

I don't think a save game captures the full history, at least not in a form that's easy to replay.

I'm far from the best player, but FWIW:

My first build in a new city is almost always a granary. The only real exception is if my only food source is offshore in which case I might build a workboat first (unless another city can provide it faster). The next priority is usually to get a border pop so that might mean a monument and/or library early on. But later in the game it's usually much more cost effective to run an artist (if under Caste System) or build culture for a few turns.

You usually don't need to build all those buildings in every city, and specialization is important. Production cities get a barracks and forge. One or two stables are usually all you need because you're not building mounted units everywhere. Commerce or science cities will get a library. I find that I end up eventually building a lighthouse and harbor in most of my coastal cities because they're fairly cheap relative to their benefits. I usually don't prioritize courthouses unless I'm Organized, and even then it's usually only to enable the Forbidden Palace.

In Civ4, you will generally get farther building wealth and units. Buildings often don't justify their cost.

 

[sampsa]

I suggest you to watch some youtube-playthroughs by Lain. AZs play is often interesting, but not very good. The AI is so bad that it deserves a massive, unfair advantage. You always want your cities to have food, but you don't need hills. You can get production via slavery. Granary is a good building, forge and library decent, others situational.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

One thing that I do all the time is take a good production city and make a "gun pump". I have a barracks, a granary, (maybe a stable) and maybe a settled GG or two, and I churn out nothing but units. I usually build the Heroic Epic in another city to help with unit production if necessary. This keeps the wolves from the door and I don't get DoW'ed as often as I usually used to.

My two pence, YMMV.

 

[ArchGhost]

I've learned a hell of a lot from reading discussions here and from watching absolutezero's videos, but I feel even though I win all the time on noble I'm most likely not doing the most optimal things. (I really only play noble because I dislike the idea of the computer having an unfair advantage, it should be on equal terms, the computer should probably be smarter though.

This describes my mindset EXACTLY when I came here 2 years ago. Noble is not really hard except when you don't grasp the game, but I didn't fancy the idea of a cheating AI moving up.

One way to move beyond this hump is to realize it's a lie. Noble may not be hard, but it was never fair. The AI doesn't have any penalties like on lower difficulties, sure, but it still has advantages. Slight advantages in unit upgrade costs, and either very small era based research boni or maintenance cut, I don't remember which. They are small but they are there, just less visible than the massive research boni, hammer/maintenance/unit upgrade discounts and free techs/units of higher difficulties

There's also the smorgasbord of other random perks the AIs have on all difficulties, mostly pertaining to rules or diplomacy:

Spoiler :

-AIs get combat bonuses against all barb units; you only get these on lower difficulties, and I'm not sure if you get them against naval units
-AIs never trade fair with you, but can always just give tech to each other so long as they don't dislike one another. There is no beg/value formula involved for them; instead they evaluate how much they like each other and the relative value of the techs, which go down the later the game goes. If AIs are Friendly on both sides they will literally give away monopoly techs to each other all the way up until the final space techs start being researched.
-AIs generally value all trade between each other lower than with the player; they will trade away Horse or Iron for Corn, bribe in others with crap like Drama, etc.
-AIs can move shallow water boats across single (and maybe 2) ocean tiles early, so long as you don't have vision of them doing it. Big deal? It is on water maps!
-AIs can break peace treaties to DoW you under certain conditions (have had this happen personally, more than once!)
-AIs never make demands, threats, or beg gifts from one another, suffering no diplo hits for anything related to this.
-AIs can not temporarily allow the player to peace vassal to them for protection at will and free Friendly diplo
-AIs have hidden diplo modifiers (peace weight) that make like-minded AIs almost always skew towards more friendly relations. This works the other way too, a trouble maker AI in a group full of opposite minded rivals will almost always rustle some jimmies. There is some random variation but it's the general case. These AIs in particular are more dangerous to the player as they may still like the other AIs for various reasons or random peace weight rolls, but start off with static hidden -diplo against the player.
-AIs do not offer compensation/attempt to bribe the player to war, even though the code for it exists (dummied out?). Instead they just make demands and drive your diplo down with one party or the other.
-AI behavior generally drives diplomatic relations of the player down over time, mostly due to random BS like demanding war joining or stopping worst enemy trading, which you have zero control over when and how often the AIs make them. AI relations are almost always dictated by peace weight or religious alignment and shift often unless locked into BFFs (vassals).
-AIs are remarkably resistant to the idea of embargoing each other (useful to you since closed borders means they can't strike you from another's land). All AIs except Tokugawa will refuse to embargo a friend (Pleased or higher), and a good deal of them require them to be Annoyed with the target. Most of them require good relations with you to even consider the deal. Mansa will never close borders unless he's Friendly with you and Furious with the target! Contrast this to how the AI simply up and demands you stop trading with their worst enemy -- for nothing -- all the time, repeatedly.

It's not fair to begin with....so what's piling on a few more advantages but additional challenge? I mean, as a human player you're also more or less boundless and YOUR diplomatic stance means squat...the AIs are never truly safe from you.

There's also certain tactics that work better or only on higher difficulties, like initial worker steals, quecha attacks, having small vassals do the researching while you focus on the productive muscle with the glut of land you take from them, etc.

Monarch is a good place to start. AIs all start with Archery here so you'll find they're grumpier and harder to kill off early than usual, which will help you learn to avoid crutching on things that don't really work all that well higher up, like Chariot rushing, and improve on things that can work with good execution saving time, like Axe rushes or Horse Archer attacks. Emperor is where they start with a worker to steal

My other question was on optimal building order. Assuming I have all the tech for important buildings in a new city, also assuming a good food source and a couple hills, what is the best build order? Right now I go monument (if needed), granary, forge, courthouse, library, barracks, stable and in coastal cities, I go monument (if needed), granary, lighthouse, forge, courthouse, harbor, library, barracks, stable

There isn't one, really. Most buildings other than granary you will not build in all cities; there's even argument to avoid building just that in crappy enough ones that will only work a single tile (like a gold mine) for long time or are in no-man's land in the tundra/ice...

General rule of thumb for a city to be useful it needs a few things:
-enough food to grow
-a granary to regrow faster
-slavery civic to whip away pop into hammers
-the ability to build Wealth (or Research, pre-Currency) to reduce economic strain when not whipping it


That's in the general sense. Moving beyond that you get into more specialized application:

Spoiler :

-Monuments are fine if you have no other option, they're just a 1 pop whip. Later (Caste, Music) you don't need them unless CHA and want the happy though. Mysticism is normally a bum tech so I wouldn't try hard to acquire it, but its fine enough if you start with it.

-Lighthouses are generally not super hot buildings unless the city has seafood/Lake tiles that can benefit from them; most land tiles are more powerful as they can provide more food, more hammer, more commerce, etc. eventually. Working simple coast for 2f/2/c is something you usually don't want to do unless you have to, usually a sign you put yourself into too much economic crunch through overexpansion. It's a bit different if you're FIN or completely isolated though.

-Libraries go in spots with good commerce or enough food to support 2 scientists. Once you can build Wealth, it's less important to keep putting in each city that qualifies. They can also be used for border popping if the AI is being uncooperative with religion and the city is productive enough without extended borders to get it emplaced.

-Barracks early on are really only useful if you plan to hit someone fast, and then you can usually get away with just one in your best production city for a handful of important promos (medic unit, maybe some CR2 axes) after some combat. With a later attack they are awesome to have everywhere as you can 2-pop whip them into your first unit in each city.

-Stables are more situational. Maybe one in the best city for a HA attack for Shock/Flanking 2 HAs, or one in the Heroic Epic city when it's producing elephants. The only time I'd put them everywhere is for a Cuir attack if Theocracy or Vassalage isn't an option, which I do somewhat often because I prefer Nationalism for a war civic (+2 happy from barracks and low cost, yes please!) and religious spread/the availability of Theology from the AI is variable from game to game.

-Courthouses are usually unlocked AFTER you can build Wealth already, which is mostly the better option if all you are doing is teching. They are more helpful in full war mode, where you can use the cost reduction over time while producing units. Also a great option in far away cities you capture when they first come online. ORG Courthouses are always worth it IMO but wait until you have the population built up to whip them then other stuff quickly first.

-Ditto for Forges, which are quite expensive and don't pay off their cost until you put 480 more hammers through the city. This can happen quickly when they are pumping units though, especially expensive ones like Cuirs, so often the first thing I whip in cities when teching time is over and war prep starts. Earlier, they can be put in large, hammer rich cities earlier to have them build extra fail-gold if IND, or in the HE city to let it almost one-turn most units. There's also an obscure use to whip one early after Metal Casting and farm an Engineer from that city, for either Engineering bulb (trebuchets), some wonder rush, or save for Mining Inc. much later.

If you are moving beyond mid-game war (like to Artillery or Tanks or something) or planning on going for Space, it's a good idea to pick up Assembly Line and then have Granary + Forge + Factory + Coal Plant in pretty much every city with enough land tiles to be productive. Picking up the Guilds + Chemistry techs for the workshop upgrades (you should have Civil Service for spreading around farms already for a while), and possibly Communism for State Property to go along with Slavery or Caste System, these buildings make a hammer-based economy where you just build everything (units, Wealth, Research) more effective.

 

[Fish Man]

@ArchGhost

Pertaining to the AI bonuses you mentioned, I'd like to make a few clarifications.

"-AIs never trade fair with you, but can always just give tech to each other so long as they don't dislike one another."

That's true, AIs do give techs away for free sometimes. However from what I've seen that is exceedingly rare, and in addition AI can also do the same for the player as well. I played an iso game where Wang Kon gave me printing press for free, when I had 0 beakers in it, just like that, putting me 2700 beakers ahead on the path to rifling. Gamebreaking, yes, but it happens to the player too so it's not something that only the AI benefits from.

The other thing is never trading techs fairly - from what I've seen, AIs do trade techs relatively fairly. The reason that they seem to want lopsided deals with you, especially on higher difficulties, is that techs are actually far more expensive to the player than to the AI. Tech costs are a flat 130% of normal for the player on deity (normal being noble), while for the AI they're still 100% but have their cost reduced by 5% per era as part of the part of their absurd bonuses giving them 5% reduction of all costs per era (not sure where this is in the code, but I've seen it mentioned multiple times). This means that by the industrial/modern era, techs are roughly about twice as expensive for the player as the AI!

(The following paragraph is almost pure theory and hasn't been really tested except anecdotally.)

Now, I think the reason that this matters is that when AIs are giving a tech to YOU in a deal, they calculate how many beakers YOU stand to gain from it, but when you give a tech to THEM, they calculate how many beakers THEY stand to gain from it. So now the problem here is obvious. In the modern era you think it's a fair deal when you exchange, say, industrialism for superconductors because they're both about 10,000 beakers each (in the wiki the cost is 6500 for both but that's on the smallest map size, I think). But for the AI industrialism is effectively WORTH 6,000 beakers to them, max, because THEY can research it for 6,000. Meanwhile superconductors is worth 10,000 for YOU despite them researching it at half price because that's how much it costs for YOU to research it. So from the AI's point of view, both parties have to "save" effectively the same number of beakers from the trade to be fair, and you have to throw in, say, fission for the AI to even begin to consider accepting. But from your point of view it's unfair BS (and I partly agree).

"-AIs can move shallow water boats across single (and maybe 2) ocean tiles early, so long as you don't have vision of them doing it."

I find that extremely hard to believe. Maybe the ocean tiles were in their cultural borders? In which case any civ, the player included, can move any ship into ocean tiles that are in their cultural control.

"-AIs can not temporarily allow the player to peace vassal to them for protection at will and free Friendly diplo."

That's a necessary exception to the rules, otherwise the vassal mechanic would be way too abusable. AI masters give their vassals free techs at the rate of about a tech every 2-3 turns. So all a player would have to do to win on deity would be to find 20-city Justinian, vassal themselves, leech off the entire industrial/modern era, break away, and then storm the world w/ tanks and nukes without researching themselves anything beyond education.

Besides those things, though...yeah. Stuff like AIs asking for handouts and then getting mad when you don't give away your monopoly on education is pretty infuriating.