possible to come back when falling behind in civ4?

[adidas]

Hi All - I'll try to make this as short as I can:

Civ 1/2/3 veteran - my first civ 4 game. Regular size map, noble, epic, 8 civs - playing french.
I'm on a continent with spain. Own 70% of it - I'm the largest and most populous civ. The 6 other civs, including the americans, share the second continent.

I'm at the point where I'm starting to think the AI cheats . I'm #2, my score 2500. Americans are first with score 2900. But I have 13 cities they have 11 - I've never been at war and manually command my workers. Yet they i've spent the entire game desperate to catch up with them on every point: culture, tech, units. They have gunships but I'm stuck at grenadier. They are building spaceships and I have yet to build the appolo program. No matter what I do, it never seems enough.

I'm on 80% research and still make 200gold/turn. That's not enough apparently. I'm now so desperate all I can do is send spies and destroy their spaceship parts. It cost me a fortune, but I can't declare war because they are are so strong and advanced, nor can I influence their neighbours to attack them because the option is greyed out ('we have nothing to gain').

So that's it, that's the end game in Civ4? Since you can't group with other civs to attack the 'big dog', am I stuck to just watch them win the spacerace? In Civ3 that would only happen if the civ was so out of proportion with everybody else. But here I'm actually the largest civ on the planet and yet my hands are tied!

On note: the american AI terraformed very differently from the others. They have a cottage on every square, except plains where they have farms. They only mine resources. Yet my spy shows 60/70 hammers per city when my mined-out, equivalently populated cities have only 30 or so. That doesn't make any sense!

Any help or pointers would be appreciated!

 

[Heroes]

On note: the american AI terraformed very differently from the others. They have a cottage on every square, except plains where they have farms. They only mine resources. Yet my spy shows 60/70 hammers per city when my mined-out, equivalently populated cities have only 30 or so. That doesn't make any sense!

Aha, how could that happen? They surely build forge, factory, and power there. Did you do the same? How large is that city?

Also, probably they build space elevator, +50% spaceship production in every city.

 

[adidas]

That city, washington, is only 12. I haven't checked for forge/factory/power but I will and post screenshots.

I can't do the same because now, in most of my cities, my production is so low I can't build anything anymore. 40 turns for a granary, that sort of thing. Seems that I have a high birth rate, which in Civ 3 leads to more squares being used - a good thing. In civ 4 it seems to be a bad thing. Pop +1 means it need more food to avoid starvation which means -1 hammer generating square being worked on.

How can the hammer/culture/money/research output be balanced? Should I starve cities to increase production?

 

[Harv72b]

Factories & forges provide a big boost to a city's production. So can specialists (are the Americans using a lot of Engineers & Priests?). If the Americans are currently in a Golden Age, this will also increase their production (although I'm not sure off the top of my head exactly how much). And of course there's simple geography--if America's territory is filled with lush forests & plains while you're stuck in the desert and surrounded by peaks, then his production is going to be much higher than yours.

FWIW, I've found myself in similar situations many times in Civ4. I'll be far and away the largest & most populous nation, have a comfortable lead in both points and and technology, and all of a sudden an AI civ comes charging up at me and I end up in a space race. In fact, I think that every single game I've played on a standard or larger map has ended with a space race victory (me or the AI). My theory is that it's all those Golden Ages that the AI civs love to have which push them over the top in the late game; I generally use my great people to build stuff (or in the case of merchants, bring in a quick bundle of gold), and if there's nothing I can build with them, I settle them as super specialists. Perhaps I should do what the AI is doing and save some of them to launch my own Golden Ages.

 

[Heroes]

Seems that I have a high birth rate, which in Civ 3 leads to more squares being used - a good thing. In civ 4 it seems to be a bad thing. Pop +1 means it need more food to avoid starvation which means -1 hammer generating square being worked on.

How can the hammer/culture/money/research output be balanced? Should I starve cities to increase production?

Frankly, not mean to offend, but this seems you don't understand the mechanism quite well!

In general, more population is always good, -- so long as they are productive. There is no point to starve people to gain more production. Most tiles before any improvement can generate 2 food (grassland), or 1 food + 1 hammer (plain), or 3 food (floodplain). So you can't lose production by having more people. After improvement, every one more tile can give you some more production.

However, it's not that you should let your city grow at all cost. Its pop must be < its happiness limit, and in most cases < health limit, otherwise it's great waste. So the general rule is to keep your city size near these limits.

 

[mharmless]

On note: the american AI terraformed very differently from the others. They have a cottage on every square, except plains where they have farms. They only mine resources. Yet my spy shows 60/70 hammers per city when my mined-out, equivalently populated cities have only 30 or so. That doesn't make any sense!

The lab building and space elevator wonder will both add to production of space ship parts by 50%, and that will be shown as an increase in hammers while building one of those improvements. If that is what they were building, 60/70 to your 30 in a comparable city is entirely reasonable.

Also, technologies do improve things, so he no doubt has several production edges from these things that you do not as a grenadier using civ. Replaceable Parts for example will make his windmills produce an extra hammer, railroads are +1 hammer on a mine or lumbermill. Both American leaders prefer the civic Universal Suffrage so he is certainly using it. That will add an extra hammer to every town he has and you did say he has alot of them. And let us not forget the +25% from a factory, and +50% more from a powered factory.

You didn't specify which leader it was, but if it was Washington then he has the financial trait, a huge boost for base commerce. and therefore a boost to research too.

Judging by what you wrote, I'd guess you easily dominate spain in technology. She probably wasnt much of a trading partner for you. These other guys, all six of them have made it to this point. I can only assume they are close to each other religiously, or at least not too angry with each other. There was probably a LOT of trading going on between them, further improving their economic situation. How long did the game go on before you made contact with the second isle?

 

[quail]

Cottages are one of the biggest changes really. You can't just use roads on top of your other improvements for commerce; you have to build cottages at the expense of farms or else you'll fall way behind in research.

My priority usually goes something like
1. Resouce-improvements - pastures, quarries, corn farms etc
2. Mines
3. Cottages
4. Farms - only if the city can't grow otherwise

I usually leave forests just as they are (lumbermill later on), unless the city doesn't have enough food and the tile can be farmed instead. Further on I'll put down watermills where I can and windmills if some hilly place really needs food. It's great if you have corn or fish or something which gives you lots of food that can then support a heap of production squares, but otherwise you have to balance it carefully.

Oh, and my cities are usually only growing by one or two food per turn, but I build a granary as early as possible to compensate a bit.

I also have a lot of "fishing towns", which have a lighthouse, granary, and then any other buildings that boost research or commerce. Start them off on some hammers to build the important lighthouse and granary, then just work the sea and you have a fast-growing research centre. Look along your coastline: any square that doesn't have a little boat in it has commerce that you're missing out on!

I would really like other people to touch on this subject though - I'm still learning.

 

[yoshi74]

The AI is really keen on cottages, therefore makes a lot of money. If even Washington is their leader its no surprise he's leading so much (financial civs are always pretty tough in the tech race).
I'am pretty sure he also runs universal sufferage, where each towns (grown up cottages) gives him +1 hammer. Adds to a nice amount, further increased by factories, power plant and labs (in case of space parts).

I really don't think you have a chance to win here. Spies can delay him somewhat, but its only a matter of time till enough are caught and he decides to ship his gunships and the rest of his military your way .

But you've learned quite a bit, so next game youre chances are better .

 

[adidas]

Both American leaders prefer the civic Universal Suffrage so he is certainly using it. That will add an extra hammer to every town he has and you did say he has alot of them.

You nailed it. He had most of his squares with towns, and he was using universal suffrage.

I ended up going through the last past of the game very fast, and retired right before he built the spaceship (I couldn't face the humiliation ) Turned out, he didn't even need the spaceelevator or that many factories... He churned out most of it in 12/15 turns from all of his cities. I didn't stand a chance.

I'm now playing the game a second time and it's teaching me a lot. I'm using the save/load option very often, finding it very useful as a teaching tool. When you miss out on founding a religion, you usually don't think much of it. But if you save/reload until you get it first, it teaches you that it takes a lot more work and aggressiveness to get there than you might have thought in the first place.

For example in my current game I'm now using 15 civs on huge/epic/noble. Unless I build the city on the first turn, and manually reallocate the ressources, it's impossible to build the 2 early religion first. You really have to go for it and think about the impact of every little thing. I think the game got a lot harder from Civ3.

Cheers!