Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

If another player has animal husbandry and builds a pasture on horses, does a player who doesn't have animal husbandry see the pasture?

 

Yes. You won't see the horse icon with resource bubbles, but you'll see the pasture.

 

I don't want to dedicate an entire thread to this, but is France really as useless as I imagine outside of one specific situation? The way I see it is as follows:

Louis XIV:
-Creative (great for culture production and some cultural traits) and Industrious (great for building monuments)
-Salon UB (superior observatory that also generates great artists)
-Musketeer UU (worthless, slightly faster musketman)
Conclusion: Almost perfect for cultural victories

Napoleon:
-Charismatic (helps city growth by keeping the people happier) and Organized (inferior to Financial, but helps you save some money)
-Salon UB (worthless if you're not going for a cultural victory, actually pollutes your GPP)
-Musketeer UU (again, worthless)
Conclusion: Great traits for warmongering, traits also benefit non-warmongering purposes but the UU and UB might as well not be there.

Charles de Gaulle
Conclusion: Utterly mediocre hybrid between the two.

Am I missing something, or is this a more or less accurate analysis of the faction?

 

While not great the Musketeer is far from worthless. Their 2 movement makes them great for accompanying your Cuirassier stacks to defend against pikes and elephants and leave behind in cities to defend while the stack continues to sweep the map.

Louis can be a fine leader for a newb player since they don't have to worry as much about city placement and encroaching AI culture, and plays well to their urge to build wonders like crazy. As you get better at the game the need for both of those advantages diminishes.

 

Can you elaborate on both of those please?

 

Some of these UUs have a disconnect between paper and practice. My own positive experience was with the Dog soldier, which sounded awful until I used it. On the other hand I didn't believe the consensus view that the ballista elephant was bad, but I came around as I realized how unreliable the elephant is as an available resource. The Elepult may or may not be out there for opportunists.

Whereas France is versatile civ. I am a Louis fan. The UU, starting techs, and leader traits are of the kind you would take confidently to a random world script.

 

At the start of the game, is it almost always better to build worker as your first unit unless you consider immediate rushing? I build 2-3 warriors to pop the huts around and let the capital grow and only then I build worker. How much of a bad habit is that?

If I build worker first, how many turns I should usually wait before I build the first settler? How many hammers per turn is the target?

 

Conventional wisdom is to go worker first. Developing food first will get you farther ahead more quickly than growing on unimproved tiles. Then warriors until size 3 (or sometimes 4).

 

What? All of France's leaders are great, and the civ has good starting techs. UU and UB aren't that great, but that is the case with a lot civs and most of the time isn't a huge deal. When UU/UBs are a big deal, they tend to be more positive than negative and even if they are bad they matter less than the trait combo or starting techs.. Examples: Inca, Spain, Rome get a lot of out of their UUs that helps them to be better. Arabia, Holy Rome, Japan: Saladin just sucks anyway, HRE is so bad Rathaus doesn't help much, and Tokugawa's UU is pretty much the Rifleman since Samurai are so meh and his UB might as well not exist. Another example: All 3 American leaders are fairly decent in one way or another but both their UU/UB comes so late they don't even matter. As America you're mostly just using the flexibility of Fishing/Agriculture start, one has the IND trait, another has PHI, and Washington is right up there with the best early warmongers like Shaka in the game with EXP/CHA combo but without the crappy starting techs like Boudica.

Anyway:
Louis XIV: CRE means faster borders and less urgency in settling, not cultural anything. It's commonly misread as "cultural" trait at face value but in application is more of an "early game" trait similar to how EXP doesn't actually help you expand better--it helps you develop or wage early war faster IMP is the expansionist trait. Back to CRE: it also cheapens those Libraries so you can use them faster too and start either going for your first GS or put them everywhere (2 pop whip as CRE leader) and just run 2 scientists in many spots for a secure tech rate no matter what your slider is. Pairs very nicely with Representation...which you can access easier thanks to his IND trait making the Pyramids a more successful gambit, stone or not. IND is also a nice trait in general because of cheap forges (easier Oracle from IND >> Metal Casting) and if you abuse fail-gold, very powerful economically. Louis is a great general powerhouse with a strong early game since he can help you snag a few of the more important wonders and has CRE, a trait geared towards early game setup.

Napoleon: CHA + ORG. One of the best war combos in the game. CHA gives you more room for whip anger, starts your cities out with a higher cap (which you can push further with just a monument), allows more space for war weariness if wars go on longer, and of course, faster promotions. ORG is a multifacted economic trait not just some "weaker version of financial;" it reduces your Civic cost, which is directly increased by any increment in population you get--whether that's by growing your cities up a couple pop more each, or capturing enemy cities adding that population to yours--perfect trait synergy for a CHA warmonger. It's always in effect, and lets you expand with more economic stability or gives you a bit of a break to afford more army instead. The cheap courthouses are one of the best things to whip into a newly captured city you plan to keep by immediately reducing the economic strain it puts on you while it's still in the "hanger-on" stage before it becomes profitable. Or you can just mass whip courthouse for only 2 pop everywhere and enjoy the combination of -50% maintenance and -50% civic cost together and do whatever you like with the economic break. ORG as a trait requires you to put its most important building reduction, the courthouse, to use if you want it to not seem "inferior."

De Gaulle: CHA + IND. Two great general traits together. De Gaulle can benefit heavily from actually building Stonehenge, since he can always get it easily enough and it's an effective +2 happy in all his cities for 120 hammers. He has less synergy than Napoleon's traits towards a single purpose, but if you are comfortable with the method of abusing IND for fail-gold, you'll also enjoy the general growth and war boons of CHA at the same time.

Worker first is usually the best play, since you can adjust your tech path to meet the needs of what you want him to do (i.e. lots of forest? tech Mining+ BW while building worker so he can chop when he's done improving food. Start with Animals resources or Stone/Marble? start teching the appropriate thing etc.) while looking at your start. As long as you carefully choose your techs to allow you to improve what you've got in your start, you'll get a bigger return in terms of growth and production faster by getting the worker ASAP. Every turn you delay having a worker delays how quickly you city improves, and if you do it too much, your techs (and the improvements they unlock) can outpace your ability to complete the tasks queued up for him.

The scenarios where you wouldn't go worker first are rarer:
-If you have strong fishing start, such as 3-4 seafoods or 2 fish specifically (Fish give 5 food, 6 with a lighthouse)+another seafood. In this case it can be better to build workboats first, even if your civ doesn't start with Fishing (build a warrior while waiting) and build your first worker after improving the seafood, since you can grow up faster and build the worker quicker on the high food tiles (any seafood is +4 or better, faster than almost any unimproved tile and also gives commerce while you use it) to make up the lost turns. I like to tech towards Bronze Working while doing this so it will be possible to whip the worker in some cases to make up even more turns. Tech Sailing earlier too to improve those seafoods with a Lighthouse, especially if you're ORG. It turns into a nice high food location quickly (often a good NE spot later) and seems more common to find than crazy spots like double wet corn or some combo with grassland pigs since you can randomly spawn on it when the map generates pretty often.

-If your start DOESN'T have a lot of trees, but you DO have a high-hammer combination tile to work such as Plains+Hill+Marble or Plain+Hill+Forest, you can opt to build a warrior (NOT scouts) or two first, especially if you start with Hunting and don't start with one... The goal would be almost always to either steal a worker, choke an enemy AI to slow them down, farm barbs for a level 4 unit, or just start fogbusting early if nobody is close by (i.e. you got unlucky). AGG (boosts the warrior) or EXP trait (helps you build the worker faster after done with the warrior opening, esp. with a strong hammer tile) help this type of start a lot, as well as starting with Agriculture, Mining, or Hunting. The reason not having a lot of trees factors in is you don't need to chop them away to improve tiles, therefore your need for a worker is lesser and more justifiable to gamble on warrior-first.

-You are playing a civ with a strong, very early resourcesless UU like Inca, Mali, or Babylon. In this case you might opt to put extreme pressure on a close opponent with fast Quecha/Skirmishers/Bowmen since these unit have a significant advantage at this stage of the game. Quecha can conquer archer-defended cities with great cost effectiveness and defend/choke against other warriors well since they are promoted already, Skirms are the ultimate early game chokers as 4 power archer (you can even kill warrior or other archer defenders with them), while Bowmen can choke even an AI with metal as long as you have some trees to hide in to survive chariots. Civs with the PRO trait can also do this in theory by using stronger archers to choke the enemy with, but a lot of that depends on just which one (only Charlie starts with Hunting for a quicker path to Archery) and how close your opponents are.



Expansion timing for settlers is largely a personal preference thing, I feel. A lot of players I've watched tend to slow build the first settler at 3 pop (with the assumption you grow up while building things warriors or putting hammers into a wonder you don't intend to finish), only after all 3 tiles have been improved, or grow to 4 and 2-pop whip it. Either works fine, since slow building at 3 start earlier, while 4 pop whipping cuts off the back end turns and can garner some overflow. I'm sure somebody has written something up about which is faster is which situations, but the only rule of thumb I follow myself is to make sure when whipping, to ge the maximum amount of overflow: If you use BUG mod, look for that +29 hammers of overflow next turn in the progress bar, or as close to 29 as you can get it without wasting turns adjusting your tiles.

 

I have been away from Civ 4 for so many years, it might as well be new.

I play mostly on Warlord and Noble, not quite ready for more just yet.

I've noticed some sort of annoying pattern. Mostly on Noble. I don't play Custom games, I play "Play Now" usually with Fractal or Tectonics on Huge with Marathon. Like clockwork, one of my neighbors always DoWs me no matter what; no matter how friendly before, no matter what Trade is like, no matter any factor they always DoW. Then, not long after, there's always a war where the majority of the known Civs around me DoW at the same time. This has happened through every playthrough no matter how I play. Though typically, it doesn't happen until I have 3 to 4 cities. Not sooner. My question is, is this basically hardcoded?

Unrelated, but on Noble and below, am I ok to leave workers automated? I know it won't get me the most out of them nor the most efficient progress, but micromanaging workers is 1. boring to me (since I am so bad at the game right now that it's hard to divvy up my attention) and 2. I know so little about what's what that I wouldn't even know the right time to place the right thing where for what.

I typically end up either dead because I tried to keep pace with technology so I neglected a strong enough army to at least defend myself, or I end up with a decent enough sized early army (to fend off the clockwork DoWs and maybe steal a city or two in the process) but well behind on technology.

 

Re. declarations of war. This is probably because you are not building enough units. AI's will not declare war in the early game. I thing it i something like they need 2 defenders per city, but generally you can forget about the AI declaring war until some time has past. If you do not have a military comparable to your empire size by that point they will declare war on you because it is in their best interest. You are probably prioritising growth over army size a bit too much.

Re. Worker automation. It is not a question of how efficiently you turn worker turns into improved land, it is what improvements get built. If you look at an AI empire you will see every city is a "general" city, producing a bit of food, a bit of production and a bit of commerce. This is inefficient as you need every building building in every city, and the national wonders are under used. You can make a MUCH more efficient empire by having production cities, commerce cities and (a) great person city(s). You cannot do this with automated workers. If this is not fun then you have to find your way. For me this (as a builder) this is the fun bit of the game.

You do not lose by being behind in technology. I spend 90% or more of the time I am playing leveraging my human skills to survive and thrive while behind in tech.

 

I can write my opinion just about workers,I don't play Marathon speed,an expert in this will give you the answer.Maybe you have a very weak army,different religion,may be many reasons,maybe is not hardcoded,me too will wait for the answer from an expert.
It is well known this thing,automated workers neglect cottages,they make many farms,no matter the difficulty.I saw in YouTube a game on deity,automated workers making cottages....on the hills,when that player saw this:'Oh my God ! '.To let all workers automated is a little risky and I saw too many times this thing,worker is near a tile good for a farm or cottage,but he will go very far to make a fort,in a tile with a resource already in excess.

 

I play huge/marathon/emperor. I don't get DOW'd on (or dogpiled) every game. It happens sometimes.

 

Not really. Some leaders are more prone to war than other, but you have to be proactive in diplomacy; give tribute when asked for, adopt their religion and since this is noble, trade tech with them and let them get the better end of the deal. Once you get them to pleased, you can always beg 1 gold from them. If they accept, then it enforces a 10 turn peace treaty. 10 turns doesn't sound like much but if they plot war during these peace treaties, it cannot be towards you.

Also if they are friendly, they can't plot war; some don't plot at pleased. Note that the disposition is when they plot war-- if they plotted war against you when they were cautious, then whatever happens afterwards is irrelevant.

There are also times when war isn't avoidable. You can tell if the option to war with others is in red in the trade screen and they have the excuse "we have enough on our hands right now", meaning they are already ready for war. Keeping an eye on that will know if it's best to pursue diplomacy.

I would at least make sure your special tiles are improved. Automated workers are too inefficient at improving those.

Chances are you aren't improving tiles fast enough, which delays your expansion, which snowballs. And thus you can't keep up in power, tech, or size, which also limits your diplomatic options. You also want to expand to all the good sites as soon as possible too. Land = power

Also prioritize key techs. On noble, Alphabet and Currency are some of the best techs to go for as it enables trade, and especially currency that lets you sell tech and resources for gold, as well as building wealth. Don't waste beakers on things like religious techs or Iron Working because they don't unlock anything you really need early on.
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A good way to ward off invaders is to make your border cities on hills; that makes it much more difficult for them to attack you.

 

I played Civ II in Evolve,was down a period,maybe the only game network where Civ II works.For Civ IV is good too GameRanger.Sure IsralsBack is the ID in Evolve? In Steam are more users with ID Yorik..