Newbie Plays Settler Level Civ4 Vanilla

[Seraiel]

You get the base (2 for a Plains Mine) + 2 for the Mine (4 ) and Copper (and various other resources) give +2 extra , so 6.

Working Plains-Mines is absolutely counter-advised because they eat and therefore whipping them away gives more than working them. If building Workers and Settlers however, this doesn't matter, so in that situation, they're strong tiles.

 

[TheCox]

Why are riverside cottages so much better than just building them on Plains or what not?

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk

 

[Virupaksha]

@ The Cox

Grassland riverside cottages get an extra gold immediately from being next to the river making them a 4 yield tile straight away, 2 food, 2 gold, getting extra gold as they grow. Without the river they are 3 yield (so weak) to begin with.

The problem with building cottages on plains or hills is they only supply 1 food so you have to find some extra food from somewhere else. Personally I hardly ever do this as if a city has this much surplus food I would want to use it as either a production city if it has a lot of hammers or as a great person farm.

 

[ikotomi]

It's not just cottage tiles btw. All river tiles have one extra commerce, so riverside mines, farms, etc. are all stronger.

Riverside cottages are particularly noteworthy when playing a financial leader because they instantly trigger the financial bonus for having 2 commerce. Windmills on the river also do the same.

 

[Virupaksha]

@Serariel

I don't doubt that you are correct but the problem I have with whipping is even on 2 pop whips my cities are ready to whip again after 6-7 turns and the unhappiness just becomes unmanagable.

I obviously don't understand whip mechanics properly. Is there an article you can recommend.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Virupaksha: Cities gaining whipping-anger over the course of the game is not unusual and you can work against this, by simply conquering as many happy-resources that they still stay happy. REP also gives you +3 in the biggest 5 cities and if anything fails, you simply 4-pop-whip a Market for 4 extra . Also later, whips are 3 and 4pop, then the anger reduces automatically. What I suspect, is, that your cities are simply to big, it's not really difficult to keep a size 4-6 city happy, and for Dom- / Conquest, only the capital should or needs to grow large. I wrote a guide on city-management, don't know which issue of CIV Illustrated it was, but you'll know when you look at the names of them, I listed them in my signature and you can also find them in the Strategy-guide's subsection.

And the reason why non-riverside-Cottages outside of the capital are so terrible, is because every point of population also increases the maintenance. On Deity, a point doesn't cost 1GPT, but it's not far away from that sometimes, if a tile only gives 1GNP, it's basically giving almost nothing. Non-riverside Cottages in the capital are also only really worth it once they've grown to Villages or maybe Hamlets if including the bonus from Buro.

And Plains shouldn't be worked before the late-game-techs of Biology or State-Property. Lots of players made calculations on that, me too. Working Plains often costs , more than the Plains-tile gives. 1 is easily 1.5-2 via the whip, Plains cost 1 so they cost 1.5-2 , as they give 1 , that's a netto-loss of 0.5-1 / turn.

 

[greenbelt]

1. Here is a Map of the Known World @ 2760BC.
-- this area is covered with Jungle
-- 1 cow resource on a Plains tile
-- a couple of Gems & Dye resources


2. 2840BC. Madrid grew to 3 citizens. Harvesting 9/8/9.

3. 2760BC. Lighthouse will be done in 2 turns. Next Madrid will produce a Settler.
4. 3760BC. Already finished Writing. Now researching Alphabet to allow trading techs with other civilizations. Alphabet will be done in 20 turns.
5. Tribal Villages gave us more Gold and a Worker.
6. Hinduism(3640BC), Buddhism(3200BC) & Judaism(2880BC) have been founded in distant lands.
7. We adopted Slavery Civic in 3320BC. Genghis Khan adopts Slavery in 3000BC.
8. Spain has 3 Warriors exploring. 2 workers are near Madrid.

 

[Virupaksha]

@greenbelt

One small point, it was unnecessary to connect your mine with a road. Roads are only necessary to connect resources and cities and beyond this it is better this early to improve tiles. Great result to get an extra worker from a hut though.

It's very tricky to know where to settle as the map is a little food poor, especially not being creative as your cities won't grow into their BFC without some culture. If it were me I would chop out Stonehenge after settling the first two cities, in fact I'm horrified how much of a Stonehenge addict I've become. I'll give it a stab and hopefully Serariel and others can correct me.

If you go north you can settle either 1S or 1SW of the corn due north. There is an oasis next to the copper which you can use as a second food resource as madrid will soon grow onto this but you need to fogbust a little more in this area if possible. This city could work the copper allowing Madrid to grow faster. Then there is a spot to the NE to take cows, wheat and horses in the BFC. Were you creative or if you choose to build Stonehenge ideal spot would be 2S of the horse, otherwise you need food in the first ring so either 1W or 1SW of the wheat. You don't need the horses right away - unless you have plans for war - as you will have axemen online soon.

Problem with this is both cities are very short of gold. Second smaller problem is they need roads to connect them.

I'd also be tempted to settle on the stone and research masonry, halving the time to build Stonehenge (with sailing the stone would be connected immediately) but this city is useless without culture.

To the south there is a great spot 1SW of the plains cow with 2 gems and 2 dyes in the BFC. It's a bit food poor but you'd get so much gold from the gems and dyes in the long run you could farm a couple of riverside tiles at least to start with. Problem is getting anything out of the city straight away, you need IW for the jungle gems and calendar for the dye. This city also takes you towards the ivory giving potential of war elephants.

Alternatively you could make this into two cities using banana as the food but you will need both IW and calendar to get them online.

I prefer the northern horses to the ones in the SE as that site is really food poor.

I'm shocked by how long its taken me to decide but I would go for the NE city as the second city. I'd use this city to build troops and maybe help with worker/settler production if building wonders in the capital. I'd settle with the two food resources in the inner ring and build a granary once I had 5 axemen or so, maybe even before as Isabella gets cheap granaries. Granary could even be first build while your workers connect it. A barracks would also be good.

I think for the third city I'd pick the southern site, just because I'd hate to lose it to the AI. I'd go IW after Alpha to get the gems online. The map is terribly gold poor if you lose this site.

Regardless of where you decide to settle you must get your warriors to your city sites as your settlers are produced. Settlers are completely defenceless and need escorting.

Your workers need to build a mine on the copper and connect it with a road.

Please let us know which AIs you have met and which direction they came from.

Hope this helps.

 

[ikotomi]

If you have not met any AI's I would stop researching alphabet and start researching Maths. Alphabet is extremely powerful, but useless early on in isolated starts.

Stonehenge isn't that valuable here, as the second ring food cities aren't better than the first ring alternatives. Losing one dye tile is nothing compared to all those hammers you lose building Stonehenge, or settling a bad tile and researching masonry just to get stone. If you're giving up that much, I'd stop and think if you're overvaluing the wonder a little. You also never have a good shot at it in higher difficulties.

The land to the south is useless until you have ironworking and enough workers to chop jungle. Even then it doesn't get good until you get calendar for bananas. Better to settle the north which will let you get to that point faster. If you lose it to AI, you can just conquer it later and they will have been kind enough to chop some of it for you.

The best potential spot looks like the corn to the northwest, but you need to scout more. Based on what you can see on the map, 1SW lets you make the desert tile useful and spreads irrigation from the oasis, but if there's good land to the north, you're just missing out on too much. With your first warriors you want to explore in a circle around your capitol, as that's the land you are most interested in learning about. The lesson here is that building early warriors and scouting quickly is very important.

The next spot you want is the wheat+cows to the NE. I think one SW of wheat to get cows is a little bit better than getting horses first ring, but you still have time to scout the area north of the horses and east of the wheat to see if there are better options, especially if you can settle the northwest first.

Your goal at this point is to scout more in the North until your first Settler is completed.

 

[Virupaksha]

@Ikotomi

Respectfully disagree about SH. I find it pretty easy to get on emporer (never played immortal or deity) and to have ideal city placement for the first 6-7 cities at the price of I think less than 2 axemen (even without stone) is quite a bonus.

We agree on the placement for the NE city. How would you propose to get the border pop for the horses. A library (which the city doesn't need except maybe for OU) is 90 hammers compared to SH 120. A monument is 60 i think - 2 monuments equals SH (but without the GP points). Or wait until music and build culture?

You are probably right about settling both cities north though, its just those 2 gems look so appetising. And there is a serious lack of gold in the north on this map.

 

[Virupaksha]

@Serariel

I would never work non-riverside plains tiles but farming a riverside tile is food neutral and gives one extra hammer and one gold, as well as a boost with Biology. Is this also a mistake?

 

[ikotomi]

Stonehenge is the cost of two workers, or a settler and another warrior. This is a lot of stuff early in the game that really get your civ rolling, considering that most cities don't even need a border pop to be effective early game. If you only truly needed a border pop in one city, you spent 120 hammers for 30 hammers worth of production.

Another thing to note is that even with a monument, ten turns is a long time to be waiting for useful tiles. Your city probably wouldn't have grown to size two, while a first ring food city would have grown and is already working on more useful things for your civ. The great prophet is also quite annoying to get, as early scientists are much more valuable without a holy city.

Sometimes you do settle bad cities and chop the monument. I would do this for a second food resource, not for a dyes.

As for how to border pop the horse city, you can always wait until it becomes important to work more tiles. If you met more civs, often times religion will pop it for you. Otherwise it's only a one pop whip, as monuments are only 30 hammers. A library isn't worth the hammers here, and you will border pop slower since it takes 3 times as long to build as the monument. I wouldn't worry about it until after granary, as there are enough tiles to work just pumping workers, warriors, or settlers for now.

The plains farm isn't worth working because it's food neutral one hammer. It would take 30 turns to produce the hammers you get from having whipped the tile away!

The general concept behind all these ideas is more production now as opposed to delaying development into the future. Especially in the first 50 turns, those first settlers can provide a much larger boost to your civilization's progress than a few free monuments. Getting wonders can be fun, but will often slow down your progress more than speed it up unless you are able to really leverage the strengths.

If the stars align where you settled on stone, you get masonry pop from a hut, you have 4 cities and the Stonehenge is still available, then I might start Stonehenge... and let it fail for gold. I don't really know what's better, as I wouldn't want the great prophet points until I can work scientist specialists. Even Oracle is quite irritating in this regard, but the free tech there can be much more significant.

If even then, you are truly addicted to Stonehenge, I would ease off of it by picking creative leaders first, then leaders wihout creative or mysticism. Then you will start seeing the power of early production.

 

[Virupaksha]

@Ikatomi

Just don't know what to make of this post. It appears full of hostility.

 

[Lennier]

I play emperor/huge/marathon. SH is almost always gone by the time I'd figure to build it. Except for the one game where I built the GW, Oracle, and 'Mids and then noticed that SH was still available. I started it figuring to get some fail gold and still managed to finish it.

 

[Seraiel]

@Serariel

I would never work non-riverside plains tiles but farming a riverside tile is food neutral and gives one extra hammer and one gold, as well as a boost with Biology. Is this also a mistake?

I also farm riverside-Plains sometimes if a city has only few good tiles and usually only to use them as "whip-away-tiles" , so I grow onto them, and then whip them away, like that I make sure I can at least work the good tiles 100% of the time. 1 and 1 is ok but it's not much so you shouldn't work those tiles if you could get a unit or a building by whipping them away.

 

[Virupaksha]

@Serariel

Thx for that, that would be my approach also.

@Lennier

I play on vanilla so there is no GW and I very rarely build the Mids - perhaps this is a mistake as I would agree Rep is the most powerful Government civic - but Mids is such a huge investment and in a size 4 capital with 2 workers chopping SH normally takes only 8 turns or so (normal speed).

SH To me almost adds a third trait (creative) - ok its not as good as creative because cities take twice as long to grow but without it cities don't grow at all. The alternative (playing as Spiritual) would be to revolt into Caste and run Gt Artists for the border pops but this requires CoL which comes much later than SH.

But SH has other benefits. I normally play as Saladdin (Sp + Phil) so SH will produce a Great prophet at about 900BC. If I start coastal I will tech masonry and go for GLH (as good as Mids I think for much less investment), and use the Gt Prophet for Theology, for which I'll get Currancy (if not self-researched) and probably two more of CoL, Calendar and Construction. if not coastal I'll skip masonry, beeline CoL (after Alpha) and use the Gt Prophet for most of Civil Service, for which if I hold onto it I may well get Machinery, Feudalism and Music as well as being in Beauro very early. (not sure this can still be done on BtS).

Of course all this is possible from Oracle too but the Gt Prophet will come later and unlike Oracle SH obsoletes after Calendar so the GP pool is not poluted long term.

For me this is a good return from 8 or so turns and 2 forests.

 

[greenbelt]

Played up to 1920BC. Settled second city in the north near Corn and the 2 Oasis tiles.

1. Worker building a Pasture on Plains/Cow. already has a Road.
2. Grasslands/Corn does not have a source of Fresh water so no Farm.
3. could mine that Desert/Hill to get some Hammers (??)
4. other Worker is Chopping Forests near Barcelona but outside the BFC.

Here is Madrid @ 1920BC. population is 4. Scout will be ready next turn.

1. a Settler is in the city ready to go.
2. what should I build after the Scout. Maybe another Scout?

Here is a view of the explored area north of Madrid.

1. this seems to be the very top of the map
2. LOL I have a Warrior trapped up there. the borders of Karakorum and the French city are blocking his way south.
3. Should I Open Borders with either or both of these guys?

My Galley is on auto-explore. Hatshepsut is somewhere near the Galley.

1. the Settler waiting in Madrid could move over to that island with the Pig.

I have attached a saved game file for 1920BC. I also saved the game in 2000BC, 2200BC, 2400BC ... I could go back a redo some stuff if needed.

 

[TheCox]

to be honest, your galley is too far away to do anything at the moment, you would waste turns in my opinion to get your settler on it.

I would think and others please feel free to correct me, as I may be wrong. I would settle in my picture 1 tile west of the cows below Madrid. This would give you access to both gems and cows right off the bat before your borders expand.

Looking at the map, there doesn't seem to be a lot of hammers anywhere, for anyone, so its going to be a little bit slower than some games I think.

I would also get the cows to the NW of Barcelona up and running asap. Barcelona has no culture coming into it at all, so its not going to expand ever unless you get something going in it. I would suggest stopping the library and build an Obelisk.. If you built an Obelisk now its 30 turns + 10 turns to get the boarders to pop, which would give you access to the corn NE of Barcelona.

Also, you have 2 warriors defending your entire Civ, the other one is cut off. I would take the scout and scout to the East of Madrid. You might want to look at building some more military units when you can. Albeit this is settler difficulty they probably will not declare on you anyways, but its always good to learn when to build military units.

If you put that next city down to the south, its on the river, so Madrid and the new city would be able to share the resources since its a river route at that point.

These are my suggestions, but to be honest, I'm still learning myself, so I would probably wait for a few of the other guys to chime in and see what they say.

 

[Lennier]

@Lennier

I play on vanilla so there is no GW

Get BtS

and I very rarely build the Mids - perhaps this is a mistake as I would agree Rep is the most powerful Government civic - but Mids is such a huge investment and in a size 4 capital with 2 workers chopping SH normally takes only 8 turns or so (normal speed).

I don't always go for the Mids. If I don't have stone, I almost never go for Mids. But that particularly game I had access to stone and marble, so I sort of went wonder wild. In my usual game, by the time I've taken care of other priorities, SH is usually gone.

SH To me almost adds a third trait (creative) - ok its not as good as creative because cities take twice as long to grow but without it cities don't grow at all. The alternative (playing as Spiritual) would be to revolt into Caste and run Gt Artists for the border pops but this requires CoL which comes much later than SH.

But SH has other benefits. I normally play as Saladdin (Sp + Phil) so SH will produce a Great prophet at about 900BC. If I start coastal I will tech masonry and go for GLH (as good as Mids I think for much less investment), and use the Gt Prophet for Theology, for which I'll get Currancy (if not self-researched) and probably two more of CoL, Calendar and Construction. if not coastal I'll skip masonry, beeline CoL (after Alpha) and use the Gt Prophet for most of Civil Service, for which if I hold onto it I may well get Machinery, Feudalism and Music as well as being in Beauro very early. (not sure this can still be done on BtS).

It's not that SH is a particularly bad wonder, it's that it's so early that there are other priorities. There are other ways of getting culture (letting religion spread to your cities), that SH's monuments aren't necessary. Especially if you keep a food resource tile in the inner ring.

Of course all this is possible from Oracle too but the Gt Prophet will come later and unlike Oracle SH obsoletes after Calendar so the GP pool is not poluted long term.

In BtS, SH (and monuments) obsolete at Astronomy. But wonders keep producing GP points after they obsolete.

For me this is a good return from 8 or so turns and 2 forests.

It's the opportunity cost of producing a Settler instead and snowballing from an additional city that you're passing up on.

 

[ikotomi]

You're playing too fast for now. Civ is a very addicting game, so its hard to stop hitting next turn, but your making too many key decisions without letting us help you. Particularly with city placement, I would wait after each settler completes. Maybe Epic speed is better for these forum games?

The first city isn't very good,as the tiles you can work are almost all desert tiles. Settling to the north would have let you work the corn and more grasslands tiles. You can still farm corn without fresh water and it will still get the 2f bonus, so you shouldn't be afraid to farm the corn first. You will be able to get the irrigation bonus later in the game when you research civil service.

The next two cities should be to your northeast. I can't see the map to well on my phone, but 1se of the deer tile seems like a priority here before Mongols push in that direction. You still want to scout north of the wheat tile before deciding imo.

As for where to go from here, I would say there are two options. Go iron working and start expanding into the jungle in the south, or construction and take out Khan. Since this is vanilla, you can take him out with catapults. Going the conquest route will also be a good exercise in using the whip to get units out fast.

@Viru I don't get why you interpreted my response on Stonehenge as hostility. You can build Stonehenge if you want in your games, and there's nothing wrong with that. All I did was list reasons why I feel Stonehenge is too difficult to leverage to make it a better option than earlier development.

I will admit that Stonehenge is probably easier to rush in vanilla because chops were much stronger, but that also makes early expansion even stronger of an option.

That being said, I'll probably just take a break. It's been a long time since I've been actively posting about a game I love, and if I'm overzealous to the point of being seen as hostile, I'm willing to just take a step back for a while.