Question about farms and cottages

[Phoenix Master]

I recently beat a civ 4 warlords game playing as Augustus Caesar of Rome. I was way ahead of the remaining civs tech-wise and won a space race victory. I got the second to lowest ranking though (I think it was because Alexander of Greece had twice as many cities as me.). I started a new game as Ragner of the Vikings. I am way behind the other civs tech-wise. My question is where should one build farms and cottages, especially in the early game?

 

[Major Tom]

The scoreboard (ranking) is heavily influenced by population. It does not mean anything for your decisions towards a winning game.

You should settle near food resources. Ragnar is financial so leverage the extra commerce from cottages (but whipping more important). Suggest you post a screenshot, early game important and not straight forward. Perhaps you don’t need agriculture in the first place.

 

[Gumbolt]

I would be posting a save. No way you should be behind on tech on warlord.

Focus on food and expansion at start. Usually 4 cities by 1500bc. I try to aim for 3 by 2000bc. Ignore the ai expansion on Warlord. They expand very slowly.

First few cities should have food in inner city ring. Unless you are creative. For commerce if capital is food good and has river then focusing on keeping capital at happiness cap while working cottages will help your economy. Top players often build helper cities to help improve cottages near the capital early on.

Overall post a starting save and take advice. Focus on techs you need and ignore archery tech as it's not needed for defences.

 

[5tephen]

Floodplains and riverside grass tiles are good for cottages. If possible I aim to settle cities with good food in the initial borders and avoid the need for farms but if needed they're competing for the same tiles as cottages. You can farm food positive resource tiles that you won't be using soon, for example sugar with freshwater access. It's a diverse game with multiple approaches though - see the recent 'no cottage challenge games' on this sub forum. Cottages/farms are generally low priority early compared to improving power tiles e.g. corn and chopping forests.

I took this as you playing Warlords rather than Beyond the Sword. I don't think many still play this and it's possible that advice will be different compared to the full game.

 

[Gumbolt]

Oh what level were you playing on Warlords. Not sure my Warlords works anymore.

 

[Phoenix Master]

I have been playing on Noble difficulty. I am thinking about posting some screenshots or a shadow game, but don't know how. Can somebody please tell me how to do this.

 

[Lennier]

Screenshots need to be hosted by a third party such as Imgur (not the only free image hoster, but it's the one I use.) The host should be able to provide the BBC code to use in your posts here to show the image. It's considered polite to put the images inside a spoiler tag. The forum does allow you to directly upload and link Civ saves.

 

[5tephen]

To post a screenshot. There's a button called 'upload file' just to the right of 'post reply' when putting a post on the forum. After that you can use the button that looks like a camera (below the buttons that make text bold/italic/etc) to insert your image into your post.

As Lennier says it's good to put pictures inside spoiler tags - happily this is the button next to the camera button.

If uploading pictures directly to forum you're limited to 9? pictures/files per post but can make more posts with more files. Not sure if it's more if you host via third party website.

 

[Lennier]

There’s no limit when hosting with a third party.