Noob Qs pls offer advice. Space Race took me until 2046?

[Balgore]

Hey guys, so im new to Civ 4, and instantly love it already. I have past experience with similar games such as Rome Total War, etc.

Anyway, for my first game I wanted to win by Space Race. I decided that right from turn one. I was on second easiest difficulty (settler I believe), so I dont think it should have taken so long. I built Libraries, observatories, etc in most cities as soon as I could. I had for most of the game at least 1 scientist in all cities. I focused all my attention and buildings towards research in all of my cities. I accomplished the victory JUST in time in the year 2046. I have a save file I will attach so you guys can see (note once I had all required techs I focused all of my attention away from research, so loading the save file you may not see any scientists or money going into it. The save also takes place like 4 turns before I win, so you can see a full layout of my stuff)

Anyway, the only reason(s) I can see think of why I didnt get it earlier was because
- I was forced into many wars throughout the game from Napoleon and Alexander attacking me early on, and then Caesar later on (so I focused a lot of attention to military unit production during those times)
- I only had approx 10 cities total, and my three most eastern ones I only captured from Caesar late late game.... Does number of cities play a big role in research speed?
- I paid little attention to culture and religion, I never even built a single religious person. Does that effect research or civilization growth largely in general?

Does that explain it? Ive read the full manual, all of this site's info page, a lot of other tips and suggestions which I followed (such as worker first, etc). I dont understand how with my goal of building towards it first turn, on Settler difficulty, it took me until 2046 to achieve lol?

Thanks for taking the time to help noob-Balgore out lol.

 

[mfie]

I see, you had only 4 cities till 1600, and since you didn't really use much scientist or cottages (I suposse, I can't see for sure), its normal you researched extremely slow. This is probably the biggest problem. Even if you go space, its reccomended that you take some cities form the enemy if you have only 4.

 

[EmmEnnEff]

More cities that work tiles that produce commerce (Cottages, rivers, commerce resources (Gold, Silver, Furs, Gems, etc) increase your empire's commerce.

Your research is a fraction of your commerce.

As such, having more cities that are making you money will increase research.

However, the caveat is that the more cities you have, the more gold you have to pay for maintenance fees.

As such, if you found a new city, and only build farms/mines in it, it will actually be a drain on your gold/research. You probably want to use those kinds of cities to produce military.

Your commerce/research cities should ideally be founded near rivers, and near either food, or commerce resources. Irrigate a tile or two for faster growth, then cottage, cottage, cottage them.

 

[Balgore]

Ah thanks a lot guys. That was my main problem I think, I did not build nearly enough cottages, and my city placement was pretty poor. Also for some reason I couldnt find aluminum anywhere on the map, that hindered my building times with certain things by double I guess. Yeah I also did not have very many cities. Thanks for the tips, ill keep those in mind for future games.

One last question about City Maintenance; does that come from your daily commerce, or your total number of gold? Because I know research only comes from daily generated income, if city maintenance comes from your total treasury first, then I could use 100% of my daily income towards research? But im guessing thats not how it works lol... and that it takes away from daily income as well?

 

[madscientist]

Ah thanks a lot guys. That was my main problem I think, I did not build nearly enough cottages, and my city placement was pretty poor. Also for some reason I couldnt find aluminum anywhere on the map, that hindered my building times with certain things by double I guess. Yeah I also did not have very many cities. Thanks for the tips, ill keep those in mind for future games.

One last question about City Maintenance; does that come from your daily commerce, or your total number of gold? Because I know research only comes from daily generated income, if city maintenance comes from your total treasury first, then I could use 100% of my daily income towards research? But im guessing thats not how it works lol... and that it takes away from daily income as well?

Baglore, glad to see you enjoying the game! It is very complicated and cna take a long time to master, but a space win at 2046 is fine first time around. Without seeing the save it sounds like you needed more cities and cottages, or at least a source of beakers. You will find you will get alot of answers for individual questions. Also all of the walkthroughs in the sample game thread are of immense help as well as the strategy articles.

Now a very comments that I hope help.

1) Commerce and gold.

There is a difference. Commerce is what you get from working tiles in your city screne and from trade routes (see left hand side on city screne). working tiles you got, and cottages maturing to towns are great sources (as well as dye, gold, silver, etc...). Trade routes you get from trade amongst cities, you get more from trade with foreign nations and intercontinental. You start with 1 trade route, get another from Currency, 1 from a castle, 1 from Free MArket civic, 1 from corporation, and 1 from an airport. Buildings offer multipliers (harbor +50% for example) on trade routes. Also the Great Lighthouse offer 2 extra trade routes per coastal city until corporatiion and can be the most dominant wonder in the game.

Now that you get commerce, that is NOT gold. There is a slider that adjust commerce to beakers (for research), culture (for happiness and culture), espionage (for espionage points), and gold (for paying bills). Every turn you get a certain amount of gold that is used to pay your bills for that turn, excess gold goes to the treasury and deficit comes out. Early in the game most will run teh science slider at 100% and exhaust the treasury while later in teh game you may want a bigger treasury to upgrade units.

2) City placement. Again, without seeing the save, here are some pointers:

A) The coast get's you more trade route commerce and allows you a navy, but usually the tiles you work as not as good. It's a trade off.

B) The more food the better so you can expand. Occasionally you need to settle a city for resources or strategy that sucks, but that's OK. Usually there is one of two a game like this depending on the map.

C) Fresh water offers free health. Rivers are great to settle on for cottaging as well as the potential production boost from levees and watermills plus the extra hammer from towns under Universal Sufferage.

D) Blocking the AI off from land with cities early can leave you alot of room to settle at your leisure.

E) Production. You need it but usually it costs food. Some cities it is best to load up on food and production at the sacrifice of cottages. You early military city is one example, your later IronWorks city is another. Most of my cities have a mixture of food/production/comemrce.

 

[Balgore]

Thanks, those are great tips. I should do a lot better for future games now.

 

[oranje willem]

In addition to what madscientist said:

City specialization is really important to get the maximum out of your empire. When I was a noob, I used to build every single building in every city, because I was thinking loooong term only and thought it would be best to have every minor boost everywhere and a sleeping axeman only costs money anyway.

So what do you do:
-In (more or less) every city you will want granary, monument(or other culture source, like religion/creative/other buildings) courthouse, forge and, if coastal, lighthouse.

-In cities with high amount of hammers you will also want barracks and other military buildings and perhaps build some desired wonder, but if it doesn't have much commerce you shouldn't make stuff like libraries/markets/banks etc. (Note that some national wonders require a certain amount of a specific building, then it may be useful to build those buildings in high production cities to get for example oxford university up asap.)

-High commerce cities (i.e. low production): These cities won't be pumping out many warriors, so you can skip military buildings here. Libraries/markets in these cities will greatly boost your economy/science so build all of these.

Hybrid cities (i.e. good/okay production and good/okay commerce): Like the high commerce cities, you want all economy buildings in here, but if your production is so good that it has no such building left to make, which is often the case, you may want to build all those other buildings too and make military in it as well.

Really high food cities: You will often have one or perhaps two cities with an extreme amount of overflow of food, for example 3 irrigrated corns or 3 fish + cows (but a little less is often also good ). Here you can make your, so called, G(reat)P(eople)-farm. Work all high food tiles and let the rest of your population be specialists to generate a lot of great people points. This is a lot more effective than working 1-2 specialists in a lot of different cities due to the way great people generation works. Make the national epic in here for that nice 100% great people point boost. Scientists are often the best specialists to work, because of the academy you can make in your great science cities, and because their 'discover technology' is more powerful than from others. That's why caste system is a nice civic to use, so you can have many scientists specialists. In this city you will want a library (for the 25% multiplier, but also because you can have specialists before/without caste system) and other science buildings (note that a market/bank is useless in this city because science specialists generate beakers and 0 gold, it's different if you prefer great merchants and therefor use merchant specialists)

City specialization also means that you should make the correct improvements with your workers, like farms for your GP-farm, cottages for your commerce cities and workshops/farms/mines for your production cities. However don't overdo this, you will need SOME production in your commerce cities/GP farm as well to make the multiplying buildings so sacrificing a cottage for a workshop is not always a bad idea.

You can go much deeper in this subject, but others have written up much better guidelines/strategies for this, so if you want look them up.

 

[Zavior]

Read some cookbooks/succession games. They contain a lot of useful discussion why/when/where to do things, and usually they have great reasoning to back it up.