Pixelbuddha's Help Thread

[Pixelbuddha]

Hello there,

Small Background: I played Civ 4 for over a thousand hours back when I was a teenager, now with the Civ 7 release not being to my liking, I started going back on my path, first playing a bunch of Civ 5, then Civ 3, and now Civ 4, and only now realising how little I cared back then about actually understanding the game, leading to me not actually knowing a lot. (In Civ 5 I was a deity player, Civ 6 I skipped, and Civ 3 I got to emperor pretty quickly)
So I've been watching a few guides, currently playing on Emperor in Civ 4, and I am trying to improve my early game.

The actual question:
Thing is, I am really not sure about city placement, so I wanted to test myself and see how you would settle this region, I've marked my Ideas with a "c" for City.

Hopefully I can get some insight here.

My Build order so far was Worker > Work Boat > Warrior > and now I am building a work boat for 1 turn because I will grow to 5 this way next turn, then start my first settler.

I researched Fishing > Animal Husbandry > Mining > now Bronze to whip a lot, since I have this incredible food start.

Eventually I am hoping to get the Great Lighthouse with the Stone on the top right, since this is a Lakes Map on Emperor, I should have a good chance to get it before an AI gets the same idea.
My Starting Techs where Wheel and Agriculture. I also found 2 couts in Huts, leading to me knowing where 2 AIs are.
Justinian is very likely to the southwest beyond the jungle.


I think I should settle the Stone + Pig first, it is a good defensive city and has great production value, second I would want to settle the city to the south, so Tokugawa wont steal it, and with more fishing boats from the cap it will be a good second Whipping city, even without the jungle removed.

After that I am not too sure, I would like to settle a lot around the 2 little Oceans I am seeing, raising the value of Great Lighthouse.
But the land isnt too nice, because of all the ice and desert.

So Great Lighthouse might be a bad Idea in the first place, and I should just skip it and focus on getting more land in the west?

I could try to forward settle Charlemagne in the east with the 2 marked spots, but I am not sure how realistic that is.


Long story short: Thoughts?

 

[a pen-dragon]

First, a few basics.

You want to have food in the first ring in the early game. This means the silver/corn spot should be further east and the western rice/corn further south.

Second, there is little use planning cities directly on an AIs border that will come way later, because the AI will expand too. Additionally you have to watch out not to found cities that will be culturally pressured too much. Especially the spot 4W of Charlies capital would be extremely risky. (Also both those spots have low food and would be almost useless early on.)

Third, you want to share food tiles. This is due to e.g. Istanbul having too much food for the early game and food being a necessity to grow cities, not to keep them at a certain size. A tighter layout may be useful, but in this regard yours is ok. (combining with 1 this means the rice/corn should be 1SE)

Regarding settling order, you are not that close to anyone right now, so I would settle the cities with most food first (as they can quickly contribute to your expansion). This means the southern seafood spot and probably rice/corn before pig/stone, as pig/stone will not be the next city charly builds.

Medium term I would like to grab the floodplains charly has, rather than expanding peacefully. That being said TGL would be ok, but then you should try harder to put your cities on coast. For example of your marked spots only two are on the coast.

Small remarks:

• AH is not that good with having only one resource. It should have been delayed in favour of earlier BW to chop.
• BW before fishing would also make sense, due to then chiopping workboats and before growing on the corn. This allows you to start chopping earlier.
• The great lighthouse (GLH) is not accelerated with stone. (In BtS 3.19. Which version are you playing?)

 

[Fippy]

Where the Toku scout stands first
Takes capital corn, has another corn & horse.

Playing without any UI mod means missing out on many QOL improvements.
(shown by your basic research slider that you have none)

I would recommend getting Buffy (Hall of Fame mod) for a complete goody package.
It doesn't change game basics, but you get all kinds of useful info & better looking screens.

 

[Pixelbuddha]

Oh wow, very fast answers for this old game in 2025. Thank you both!

First, a few basics.

I see. Yeah I am always very scared of not getting enough land and probably tend to overextend, so I should be a bit more calm with that.

First: Regarding the stuff with the food in the inner Ring: Learning Civ 3 from Suede Videos, I put a lot of focus on not "wasting" tiles in my empire, I guess this is not as important in Civ 4?
I have been planning around that a lot, trying to get 100% of the tiles in my empire get worked on at some point.
I've already started realising that it might be not as harsh here as in 3, since a lot of cities dont even remotely reach Size 20 and up anyway until the game is over, but I still thought it would be good to get all tiles in.
- With your remarks to the Corn/Rice cities, I would at least "lose" an entire row, maybe even 2 if I keep the north one on the coast, in which case should I just put a filler there, put down some cottages and forget it?

Second: Yeah I got the food sharing stuff from Fippys guide from 2019, which I at least partially integrated here with my horse and my clam city. But I guess I can go even harder on this?

Medium term I would like to grab the floodplains charly has

Third: Yeah that land looks juicy, which is why I tended to forward settle a lot. I also am not afraid of going to war to grab land, but if possible I always wanted to grab as much land as possible beforehand as well, so war gets less costly later. But I guess with that I hurt my economy early a bit, making my timings weaker?

---

Where the Toku scout stands first

Oh wow, Fippy! Your guide from 2019 was what got me started on my improvement journey today
I googled a lot of stuff and stumbled upon it, so thank you for your work even in the past!

Fourth: Directly on that hill? I wouldnt have seen that spot ever. I tend to not like settling Grassland hills, since that seems like wasted yields, if that makes sense. But I like settling plain hills for the extra Production boost.
How would you settle the silver and Rice then? Pen-dragon already suggested to move closer to the rice, so I guess that would be your plan as well?

Also, can I take it that you are agreeing on my Wine and my Stone city spots?

I would recommend getting Buffy

Fifth: I used EUI in Civ 5 as well, so I am not against UI Mods. As long as it doesnt change the game graphics, I dont like the texture packs I have seen.
I searched for EUI mod for Civ 4 for at least an hour and couldnt find anything that isnt a dead link, is Buffy the EUI of Civ 4?
If so, where can I get it?

---

Once again, thank you for your very quick help!
I am very glad that this forum is still active. I spend hundreds of hours of reading Civ stories on here back when I was still waiting for my first PC 16 years ago.
Civ 4 always held a special place in my heart, and it kinda feels like going full circle and coming home

 

[Fippy]

Cheers
Green hills are not that amazing, it's the only tile where you can share one corn and settle another first ring.
(as pendragon wrote, you want to share some of that food fast)
Second ring food should be avoided if possible, without creative.
(unless it's not the only one)

Silver wouldn't interest me much..with this start, happy should come from Pyramids.
I def. agree on the pigs & stone spot and would prolly settle there next (so the Pyras journey can begin).

Your wine spot looks fine, floodplains.
But i guess it's not a high priority early.

Rice i dunno..good resource irrigated, but nothing else there.
Filler spot.

We best get @lymond in here for mods

 

[Pixelbuddha]

Yeah somehow in my brain stone is there for GLH, but I think that might be because first, it kinda would make sense in my head, and 2nd, maybe its like that in other civ games, I don't really know right now haha.

But I didnt even think about Pyramids, I wouldnt have thought that I need them that early, and getting more luxuries is always better, because one lux = 1 happines in all cities, while Monarchy needs to produce a lot of units, and representation only takes care of 5 cities (well... I say only, that is actually quite a lot)

When would you aim for Pyramids?
After I settled the most important border cities? Like the stone one and the clam one?

With that I probably wouldnt get THAT much land, so I assume the next step is thinking about how to kill charlemagne?

I would rather not attack a Agg/Pro Tokugawa with a potential for samurai.

 

[Fippy]

Silver (or any shiny) is ofc good, but imo not worth putting an inefficient city down.
You could settle there between corn & silver (remember first ring ).

But you can also def. build Pyras in Istanbul (mainly with chops) while the double corn & horse city focuses on more expansion.
I am aware of guides that say "wonders are too expensive..Pyras = 3 settlers etc", but i rarely agreed with them.

With a quickly productive 2nd city, the capital can focus on one key wonder (GLH or Pyras).
It's also why early turns are so important, and 2nd cities with a monument need so bad.

 

[Pixelbuddha]

Ohhhh I see that makes a lot of sense. By getting the other cities to share with the cap, they get already improved ressources, get up MUCH quicker, and can take the roll of expanding from the cap, so the cap is free to do other stuff.

So I probably grow these cities asap to be big enough to work the improved tiles, then build settlers / workers / military as needed?

 

[lymond]

Moderator Action: Moved from QQ/QA thread to S&T as deserves its own thread. Cheers -lymond

 

[Fippy]

Yup..perfectly said.

One very important thingy about wonder building:
With slavery that doesn't mean no settlers can come out.
You can whip one & use the overflow production for your wonder.

Especially with high food cities (so Istanbul qualifies )..they will grow beyond size 5 eventually, and become unhappy.
Easily solved with a settler whip for 3 pop (size 6 ---> size 3).

 

[Pixelbuddha]

Thank you for all your help.
I will try to incorporate both of your shared wisdom into my run and see how it goes.
Then will probably be back for my next run.

For future reference, would it be ok to ping you when that happens?

 

[Izuul]

First: Regarding the stuff with the food in the inner Ring: Learning Civ 3 from Suede Videos, I put a lot of focus on not "wasting" tiles in my empire, I guess this is not as important in Civ 4?
I have been planning around that a lot, trying to get 100% of the tiles in my empire get worked on at some point.
I've already started realising that it might be not as harsh here as in 3, since a lot of cities dont even remotely reach Size 20 and up anyway until the game is over, but I still thought it would be good to get all tiles in.

This is a very easy trap to fall into. I thought the same way when i was a newer Civ IV player.

The reality is that your cities are going to spend the vast majority of the game at much smaller sizes, and the majority of the tiles on a map are bad and not even worth working until much later when you get access to late-game techs and civics. Also, slavery is an incredibly powerful mechanic in Civ 4, and the most efficient use of population is often to whip it away for the instant production. Many cities can be very productive with just a few good tiles (good food sources are always the best), and they can simply whip away the population working the bad tiles.

Tile sharing is also another very strong tactic, and this encourages placing cities closer together so that they can share certain strong tiles and ensure that one city or the other is always working these tiles. If one city is at the happiness limit that city can give a food source to a neighboring city so that it can grow faster. Or if you want to work and grow a bunch of cottages around your capitol, but it can only get to size 6 or 7, you can settle another city or two around the capitol to help do this until you have access to more happiness later for your capitol to grow and take those cottages back.

Edit: this thread is doing weird stuff with posts disappearing, suddenly showing up, and shifting around in order. Some of what i said may by redundant because i couldn't see posts that are now showing up!

 

[Fippy]

Thank you for all your help.
I will try to incorporate both of your shared wisdom into my run and see how it goes.
Then will probably be back for my next run.

For future reference, would it be ok to ping you when that happens?

Replying here..ping whenever you like, and i pong back.

 

[Izuul]

If this were my game I would settle 1NW of horses first to get access to chariots for barb defense (this city will also be a good settler/worker pump), and then I would settle my 3rd city 1NE of the stone exactly where you have your city marker. I'd go for Masonry and chop out the Pyramids in Istanbul. 4th city would share seafood* (probably 1N of where you have your marker), and 5th city would be the filler by the wine, and i think your location for that one is fine. I wouldn't bother planning anything beyond that at this point.

*It's really a shame there's no way to share that seafood with more than 2 cities. That's way more food than you will ever need there.

And while you are building the Pyramids you just need to get Writing so you can build libraries in your cities and then run Rep scientists in them. Rep is incredibly good in the early game (big boost to both science and happiness) which is what makes the Pyramids arguably the best wonder in the game.

Pretty much what Fippy said really.

 

[floydmcw]

@Pixelbuddha do you have a 4000 BC save? Or failing that a current save? (4000 BC might be in a subfolder called "auto".)

 

[soundjata]

Yeah auto-pyra game.
Be minimalistic. Few core cities with surplus food. Crank out the scientist specialists.
Research... then multiply

 

[Pixelbuddha]

This is a very easy trap to fall into. I thought the same way when i was a newer Civ IV player.

The reality is that your cities are going to spend the vast majority of the game at much smaller sizes, and the majority of the tiles on a map are bad and not even worth working until much later when you get access to late-game techs and civics. Also, slavery is an incredibly powerful mechanic in Civ 4, and the most efficient use of population is often to whip it away for the instant production. Many cities can be very productive with just a few good tiles (good food sources are always the best), and they can simply whip away the population working the bad tiles.

Tile sharing is also another very strong tactic, and this encourages placing cities closer together so that they can share certain strong tiles and ensure that one city or the other is always working these tiles. If one city is at the happiness limit that city can give a food source to a neighboring city so that it can grow faster. Or if you want to work and grow a bunch of cottages around your capitol, but it can only get to size 6 or 7, you can settle another city or two around the capitol to help do this until you have access to more happiness later for your capitol to grow and take those cottages back.

Edit: this thread is doing weird stuff with posts disappearing, suddenly showing up, and shifting around in order. Some of what i said may by redundant because i couldn't see posts that are now showing up!

Thank you for your answer and time as well.

A bit was repeated, but even if, I dont mind. Reiteration is key to memorizing stuff and actually using it.
Also some good points you mentioned, that when one city is at the happiness cap, it just doesnt need that much food anymore, especially earlier.

So much appreciated. Also I read once before that other cities can grow cottages for the cap, like you just said, but isnt the cap in general also the best production city? Later I like to use it for military or wonders.
But I guess I shouldnt generalize the cap like that. Since it can also be the best Science city especially with Academy.
Hmm, some food for thought for me.


Also welcome to my thread apparently. It seems we wrote so much this got moved into its own post.
I dont dislike it, that makes it easier to iterate on old questions and come back and look stuff up for me.

So thank you for whoever did that

Moderator Action: Moved from QQ/QA thread to S&T as deserves its own thread. Cheers -lymond

Thank you a lot! Didnt know it worked like that, much appreciated!

If this were my game I would settle 1NW of horses first to get access to chariots for barb defense (this city will also be a good settler/worker pump), and then I would settle my 3rd city 1NE of the stone exactly where you have your city marker. I'd go for Masonry and chop out the Pyramids in Istanbul. 4th city would share seafood* (probably 1N of where you have your marker), and 5th city would be the filler by the wine, and i think your location for that one is fine. I wouldn't bother planning anything beyond that at this point.

*It's really a shame there's no way to share that seafood with more than 2 cities. That's way more food than you will ever need there.

And while you are building the Pyramids you just need to get Writing so you can build libraries in your cities and then run Rep scientists in them. Rep is incredibly good in the early game (big boost to both science and happiness) which is what makes the Pyramids arguably the best wonder in the game.

Pretty much what Fippy said really.

Fippy advised the same first city location, so I will probably go for that. Having a second voice going for the same opinion makes it even more trustworthy. (Not that I didnt trust it before ^^)

Ah I didnt have rep Scientists in my mind, but that is actually pretty smart. So do I get multiple academys, or one academy and all scientists in the same cities?

@Pixelbuddha do you have a 4000 BC save? Or failing that a current save? (4000 BC might be in a subfolder called "auto".)

I'll attach the 4000 BC Autosave. It should be the correct one, I didnt check though, but there is only one game I started today so yeah

Yeah auto-pyra game.
Be minimalistic. Few core cities with surplus food. Crank out the scientist specialists.
Research... then multiply

With multiply do you mean.... killing AI?

 

[soundjata]

With multiply do you mean.... killing AI?

Yes! Spread horizontally.
Build a few settlers to fill the space then build a few units to kill AIs

The thing is pyramid boosted research should give you a decisive weapon through bulbing. For example Engineering (if you can resist researching fishing that is)

 

[Pixelbuddha]

Hey everyone!

So I played a bunch of turns, and everything kinda went fine for a while.
I got the pyramids, but my science slider was on 0% for a long time. Gems popped on a hill in my cap, and I whipped granaries and libraries basically everywhere.

Then I got to a point where I couldnt really build much more. My science was already on 0%, and there were no buildings to be build.
In the meantime I had teched to alphabet to start tech trading, and so I switched my production to science.
I also think I built too many workers, as they have nothing left to do since turn 90 or so.

I think my tech path was wrong. I am getting attacked by Tokugawa, and it looks like I will lose my southern city.
I defended his first wave, but the second was twice as big and I wasnt prepared.

But I was very suprised at how much science I got from just all the scientists I was able to afford with all the food I had + representation.Easily 100 Beakers a turn once I switched over, and I got a few scientists really fast.


So for my techpath: After I chopped pyramids aggressively I also finished writing as well as pottery, so I got started in libraries

I also went for sailing for a lighthouse in the cap and my southern city (as well as moai which is 5 turns from finishing), then alphabet, Metal Casting (whipped forges everywhere in a few turns, amazing!!! normally building them takes forever), traded a few base techs for it + maths, since no one had metal casting, then got monarchy (for the wine), machinery with an engineer, and then went for literature, to have some techs to trade with as well as get great library.


I probably should have built more military along the way to be able to defend, as it already looks like I am starting to outtech some AIs, like Isabella, Tokugawa, Justinian and Sitting Bull.

So if I wouldve been prepared, I couldve easily defended, then probably kill Tokugawa (instead of charlemagne as planned, because he turned out to be the strongest AI, and I would probably take him out second?)



I feel like I played this very suboptimal, even with the better city placement I got from you all. Maybe I shouldve skipped the Silver city?
It grew fast with the corn from Edirne and is performing well I think, but only now it is starting to outproduce its own maintenance and being able to add production to the empire. I am not too sure here.

All the food sharing was also very micro intensive, sometimes I forgot to put in new scientists after whipping threw them out, but I have a lot of happiness, and the demographics look promising as well

I think some benchmarks would be nice to know. How fast I should get to some key tech, or how much science I should have in turn 100.
My plan was to either get to Knights + Trebuchets to kill Tokugawa, or to try to beeline for Cuirrassiers and take out 2 AIs in one hit, then go for spacerace.
But yeah I think I fumbled somehwere between turn 50 and 90

 

[pmarc]

I think your slider problems are due to not working enough commerce tiles, as shown by how few highly-developed cottages there are by 425 AD. This is one of the main reasons you want tile overlap between your first few cities and your capital; once you chop that forest in Istanbul, you want to cottage the floodplains and riverside grasslands and keep working the cottages, passing them to another city when the capital gets whipped.

Generally you want to research Pottery early on... no strict guideline, but around turn 50 is usually good. That means, for example, if you want Bronze Working and Masonry
for Pyramids... you may want to delay Animal Husbandry until after all that and Pottery. There are some good animal tiles, but you can't have it all and the capital cannot work everything early on anyway. Alternatively, if you can get by on production with some mines that are not under forests + plains cow, you can delay Bronze Working, but in this case I would say bronze more important than AH.

Scientists are very strong with Representation, but I would still prioritize river cottages over them, unless trying specifically to generate great people (e.g. during a golden age).