Post short tips here!

[Crunchy]

I keep walls, if the city falls below size 7 again for whatever reason, such as building worker/settler, draft, pop rush, famine or war then the wall will be used again. Walls don't cost any upkeep and you don't get much money if you sell them. I like the look of the broken walls, its the look you have in a lot of modern cities like Norwich or York in the UK.

 

[Mud]

From reading the succession games, I know a lot of players plan their city locations so that as few resource squares as possible are shared by more than one city.

Why not?

The only advantage I can see for this strategy would come later in the game, after hospital improvements. But usually by that time the human has the advantage in the game anyway.

In the early stages in the game, it would seem better to have cities closer together, overlapping. No shields would be wasted -- it's just that each city's production will eventually be less than its "more efficient" counterparts.

But here are some advantages:

--Corruption would be lower in your second and third circle of cities.

--More cities = more temples, cathedrals, etc. That is, faster culture point accumulation.

--More cities = more improvements. Instead of, say, four cities around your capitol, you could squeeze in five or even six. That's two extra units you can produce simultaneously during time of war.

Again, it seems all the advantages would affect the early course of the game, not the later years.

What do you think?

 

[jshelr]

On Mr Mud's packed cities argument, playing on higher levels you tend to get squeezed early by neighbors in any case. So, packed cities makes a virtue out of a necessity. I would think the answer depends on whether you are looking at good food production territory. Lots of green would favor the packed city strategy. But you might end up with fewer lux and strategic resources and less favorable turf would dictate leaving more room to grow. The reason I like and tend to follow the packed city strategy is that it leaves more room for the AI to spread itself too thinly and makes it easier to start and win early wars efficiently.

 

[eg577]

Originally posted by Mud
From reading the succession games, I know a lot of players plan their city locations so that as few resource squares as possible are shared by more than one city.

Why not?

The only advantage I can see for this strategy would come later in the game, after hospital improvements. But usually by that time the human has the advantage in the game anyway.

In the early stages in the game, it would seem better to have cities closer together, overlapping. No shields would be wasted -- it's just that each city's production will eventually be less than its "more efficient" counterparts.

But here are some advantages:

--Corruption would be lower in your second and third circle of cities.

--More cities = more temples, cathedrals, etc. That is, faster culture point accumulation.

--More cities = more improvements. Instead of, say, four cities around your capitol, you could squeeze in five or even six. That's two extra units you can produce simultaneously during time of war.

Again, it seems all the advantages would affect the early course of the game, not the later years.

What do you think?

If you build your cities such that they don't overlap at all you will waste turns by having your settlers travel so far away from where they started. For example if your settler takes four more turns to get to a spot that doesn't overlap, that settler's city will make its first settler four turns later and that settler will make its city four turns later, and so forth. When you make 30 or 40 cities this does add up. On higher diffuculty levels the AI multiplies like rabbits, so you must shave time to keep up.

There is no downside to overlapping a little (3-4 tiles). You simply do not use all your tiles until most of the game is over. And there is a huge advantage in having four or five more core cities around your capital, say when you really need lots of big cities to make a stream of knights or cavalry.

Mud also mentioned that this makes more use of your palace and forbiden's corruption killing effects.

Of course, if you are trying to build up your borders against an enemy's borders realize that the choice of overlaping or not overlaping doesn't make a difference. Just simply place new cities directly next to the enemies border. Inching your empire over to the enemies' border is needlessly slow...no matter how few tiles you overlap.

 

[Sun]

The general strategy that I follow is as such:

1) I always found my capital near two squares that has extra food production and lots of hills; this is extra fast population growth and extra shields.Often this means having to restart the game before turn one has even been completed but its worth it.

2) Next I research pottery and turn the science rate to max; depending on the civ I'm playing with this takes about 12 turns.

3) While I'm waiting for granary to become available I pop out 3 warriors; one stays home as the other two go explore. The one worker that I have available I use for tile improvement around the capitol, obviously.

4) After I've build my granary I get one more worker out to join the other worker; if I'm playing with an industrious civ then this means that together they can have a road finished in one single turn; a great help to have my settlers travel fast to their place of destination as I always construct a road there first.

5) Next I create up to 6 settlers and either have them found a city really close to the capital so as not to have to deal with corruption or at places that have luxuries or iron nearby , only resource that becomes visible that early in the game is iron.

6) After my capitol is finished producing settlers I let it produce a temple and next have it start building on a wonder.

7) Same goes for another city that is locates near my capitol and thus has little corruption; I found out that this is the only way to beat the other civs to pyramids and oracle.

8) I let another city that has a good food production rush build a granary and then pop out as many settlers as I can.

9) Yet another fast growing city is used to produce workers; depending on the civ I'm playing with, mostly either the french, persians or egyptians for the simple reason that I think that 'industrious' is the best deal you can get with civs, this means you only need one turn for two workers to finish that road that I'm most concerned about early in the game; connected city's that have access to luxuries don't revolt half as easily as unconnected cities without access to luxuries do, plus having a settler travel to its destination by road takes 3 times less time then without the road and often this has allowed me to arrive in time just before a rivaling civ got there. Another good reason to be concerned about roads is that shield/food producing tiles+roads=extra gold per turn.

10) Two other fast producing cities are set to build a barrack and then start spitting out spearman; I want at least one warrior, later upgraded to swordman if I can get Sun Tzu's Art of War, and two veteran spearman guarding each city this early in the game; bordertowns that run the risk of being attact first are guarded by at least one warrior and four veteran spearman.

11) After I claimed as much land as I could or was strategically possible; I hate having to deal with city's that only 'produce' corruption and so unless there is a resource or a luxury I never found cities too far off from either my capitol or my forbidden palace, and have them well guarded I first let them build a temple, temple=culturepoints=territory, next I have them build a library and a marketplace; after that its just keeping up with whatever new improvements become available.

12) Throughout the game I have a fast producing city set to build palace only to switch this when a new wonder becomes available to be build.

13) Wonders that are absolutely essential in my opinion: Pyramids, Adam Smith's Trading Company, JS Bach's Cathedral, Leonardo's Workshop, Michelangelo's Chapel, Sun Tzu's Art of War, Hoover Dam and Universal Suffrage.

14) Science rate is set at max throughout at least the early eras; after that depending on my max income and the luxuries that are available for trade/wanted by other advanced civs, I might lower my science rate in favour of more gold per turn so that I can buy-trade for science advances.

15) One thing I learned to avoid is to have a mutual protection act with any other civ; having one is setting yourself up for war with any other given civ without knowing in advance which civ that will be..

15) I only declare war if I know that I have absolute militairy superiority over the civ that I'm about to wage war on; and while invading enemy territory I always leave enough troops home to defend my own cities in case I get to deal with an invading third civ who just signed an mutual protection act with the civ that I'm at war with and hence declared war on me..

 

[Concona]

I don`t really agree to recources not building roads to them because my workers always work automaticely so it costs time to really give every worker something to do.

Always build cities on different continents so you haven`t got the danger of extermination.

 

[Sun]

Originally posted by Concona
I don`t really agree to recources not building roads to them because my workers always work automaticely so it costs time to really give every worker something to do.

If you micromanage your workers and you have them team up so they can improve a tile within a reasonable timeframe then you'll need remarkable less workers then when you set them on autopilot and want to see the same progress; also this this way you can make certain that those tiles that need improvement the fastest, mine/road/irrigation, get worked on without delay, which is something that often isn't the case when you have them on autopilot. As to the time it takes you to micromanage your workers; the time demand that comes with this is no greater than the time you have to wait for your autopilot workers to shuffle from one part of your civ to the the other just so they can improve one tile before they make their journey back to improve yet another tile etc, in fact, I found out that it saves time..

Always build cities on different continents so you haven`t got the danger of extermination.

If you get your ass whiped to the extend that you need the relative safety that can come with an isolated island then I say you've already lost...

 

[Concona]

Your right about that but i still think that the workers better work on there own so that they can make the decisions who are truly valueable to the nation, because when i do that the cities aren`t connected well or i forget it, i`d rather start a war then really give the workers orders, just like when you work you don`t ask everything on your boss, you act on your own (that`s in my case, i don`t if you work), just like in part 2, i had in every city a mayor except for the Capitol

 

[eighty]

Originally posted by robinm
My nasty tactic for playing catchup in tech.

10. Go round all your cities, reset the citizens to sensible working arrangements. Reset your tax rate to whatever your current plan dicates. Tell your science advisor what to research now. Check your citys' build orders, make sure they are still relevant - you may now be building cannon / musketmen / knights instead of ancient units and have several new wonders to aim at.
Build some decent military as the AI civ you just ripped off is going to come knocking. Reassess your long term plan in the light of your recent tech explosion.
Robin

Good post, good tactic. Just a quick time saver--If you set the governor back on to manage the moods and apply it to all cities, you won't have to go to each city and manually change all the taxmen back into working tiles or being entertainers.

 

[Wild Weasel]

For an industrious Civ in the late industrial era, you tend to have a lot of workers hanging around leaning on their shovels. Even pollution isn't much of a problem. If you have an RoP with a neighbour you can put them to work sub-optimising his improvements. Replacing his mine with an irrigation scheme or vice-versa, even planting a forest on his 'behalf' if you can see it would be counter-productive for him. As long as you replace one improvement with another and don't actually pillage anything you can give your guys something to do and disadvantage the AI civ in the process.

 

[Grey Fox]

You wanna know how to create floodplains?

Well here is how it's done. NUKE the river! Yes, you heard me, Nuke the river. When you nuke something, the land transforms into the lower form of terrain. So when you nuke grassland it turns into Plains, and when you nuke plains it turns into desert, so to make your city produce more food you can turn those plains (or grassland) into floodplains.

The most important part is to try and minimize the amount of desert produced. Try to not produce any, by nuking rivers near the ocean, or even nuking the coast to get the effect.

Well, be my guest and try this out.

 

[StapleWire]

okay, but i'll try to nuke the ice caps (screen border) first.

 

[Evincar]

Originally posted by Grey Fox
You wanna know how to create floodplains?

Well here is how it's done. NUKE the river! Yes, you heard me, Nuke the river. When you nuke something, the land transforms into the lower form of terrain. So when you nuke grassland it turns into Plains, and when you nuke plains it turns into desert, so to make your city produce more food you can turn those plains (or grassland) into floodplains.

The most important part is to try and minimize the amount of desert produced. Try to not produce any, by nuking rivers near the ocean, or even nuking the coast to get the effect.

Well, be my guest and try this out.

Hey!!! will a nuke clear out jungle??? that would be cool wouldn it!

 

[DarkStriderthz]

How do you let governers to manage citizen moods?

 

[Ozymandius]

Go to city screen and contact governor

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by DarkStriderthz
How do you let governers to manage citizen moods?

From the city screen, press "G". This will bring up the governor screen. Change the "Manage citizen moods" setting to "Yes".

You can also get to the governor screen by right clicking on the city in the map view and selecting "Contact Governor".

 

[Ozymandius]

Hi Sun:

What is the objective of your game?
I used to be a builder.. I tried to get civilized by building temples, libraries universities etc. I would get to 100,000 pts by 1700+/- and around 3,500 to 4,000 points.
To get a higher score I now build an occasional temple to expand my area from 9 tiles to 18 and then I sell my temple so that my cutural points will not go up. I crowd my cities close to the core two spaces apart and, whenever possible, on a river.
I always go to war with the first civ I meet. My warrior hits a goodie hut, meets the barbarians, and becomes elite. This guy will then, all by himself, 8 times out of 10, take out the warrior defending the city. It is important to cripple your neighbours by taking at least one of their cities away. Repeat this process till the area is "cleansed" of competing civs.
I'm now working on 5,000 point game but I have to avoid domination victory by giving up territory.

Read all of Aeson's posts.

 

[Sun]

My objective is of course to win..

And depending on several factors I decide to go either for a culture victory, my favorite, or for a UN victory, second favorite, or the warmonger way, the space race victory is the least of my favorites.

If I can build Leonardo's Workshop and Sun Tzu's Art of War then going the warmonger's way is far more affordable then without those two moneysaving wonders, but if I have J.S. Bach's Cathedral and Michelangelo's Chapel then I'm more tempted to go for a cultural victory.

A lot also depends on the luxuries and resources that are available; if they are scarce then I'm pretty much forced to expand by means of war just so I can lay my hands on the luxuries and resources that I need to keep my citizens happy and to stay in the tech race.

Another important factor is geography; if expanding only means adding a few extra acres to my civilization, no new or extra resources and/or luxuries, and a couple of extra cities that are so far off from my palace/forbidden palace that all they will produce is that one lousy shield than I won't bother expanding at all.

So it all depends on how the game develops; one of the great aspects of the game for me as it prevents it from getting to predictable and thus boring..

 

[Ozymandius]

If you want to win, cultural is the easiest. If you want a high score then you must go the conquering route to get maximum area. Points are (happy people *2, + content people + area)*per year. I always play on Pangea to get a large area. Don't worry about corruption; just build many size 6 or 12 cities and keep them happy with luxuries. All they need is a market place.
When I play the cultural builder, my score tops out at about 4,500 at 100.000 cuture in 1,650 AD. Firaxis does not reward the builder as much as the conqueror.

 

[Sun]

Your absolutely right when you say that Firaxis doesn't reward the builder as much as the conquerer; my highest scores are all the result of a victory by dominance and NEVER by a culture victory, which is a big flaw in the game, me thinks.