Hello newbie questions thread,
This is definitely where I belong, seeing as how I play on Chieftain (and get stalled/destroyed on Warlord). Yes, I realize how embarrassing that is. Here's a few questions that I hope, if resolved, could let me move up the ranks a little.
Welcome to CFC!
You are indeed in the right place.
General Information - I usually play as Willem (Cre/Fin), no particular map though I like "Medium&Small" and "Lakes." I have started using HephMod Beyond recently, and I also have the 2 expansion packs. I have only ever tried for a warmonger-type victory (i.e. destroying everyone else...eventually). Usually I turn off vassal states, espionage, random events, and sometimes barbarians (when I don't have barbs off I usually build the Great Wall wonder so I don't have to spend time building warriors/archers/etc). I don't use Slavery because uh...I'm morally opposed (I don't feel like doing population math), but in very very late game I will usually opt for the Universal Suffrage so I can build with my scads of money. I play on the Epic timescale.
To each their own, however, I would urge you to consider playing as some of the many different leaders provided and trying out some of those features you've turned off. I find they all add to the game and make it more fun.
1. I used to think the Creative trait was awesome based on its border popping value, but more recently I've noticed that I don't usually have enough workers to make use of the early pop. I still think it's a little useful for captured cities as well, but is there another trait that I should consider? I have read that Aggressive/etc. don't really have benefits even for warmongers because they don't do anything good for the whole civilization...or something along those lines. With HephMod's changes to civics I have also been considering Spiritual.
All the traits have their uses, though some are generally more powerful than others. Creative is a very good trait because you avoid having to spend precious early hammers and turns on monuments or Stonehenge. You also have more flexibility with your early city placements. And if there's another civ close by, you'll probably win any border tussles. The cheap libraries are very nice as well.
Aggressive can be very good for warmongering, are you kidding? Free Combat I, cheap barracks and drydocks... and of course the troops contribute something back to your civ as a whole: war booty, captured territory, resources, cities and wonders... Don't believe everything you read. The trait is what you make of it. Aggressive doesn't have a direct economic advantage the way that Financial or Organized do, but you always have to nurture your economy anyway, regardless of the traits.
2. My cities are constantly unhappy. I can build every single culture/happiness building, have a food bar between 50 and 75% and no starvation, and no civics that would poorly affect happiness to my knowledge, and my cities will still be unhappy. Do I need to promote religions? Convert to a new religion whenever I get the opportunity? What else affects happiness? (Note: This was a particularly interesting disaster the first time I played HephMod Beyond and didn't turn the "Revolution" aspect off.
It's been off in all subsequent games though.)
Hoo boy. This is one of the most common newbie questions. Here are a few quick tips and a link:
Spreading your state religions gives you +1
in each city where it's present; changing religions probably won't help, quite the opposite, because you probably have fewer cities with the new religion.
Every city has a "happy cap"--a maximum number of citizens it can accommodate before they become unhappy because the city is "too crowded". Some of the best ways to make more citizens happy and thereby raise the cap are: (a) some resources, such as ivory, gold, gems, sugar, and so on; (b) civics, especially Hereditary Rule in the early game; and (c), buildings, which you've been using.
Early in the game, try to keep your city from growing beyond its happiness cap. If it does, use the Slavery civic to swap the unhappy citizens for hammers.
To find out more about happiness, read
THIS ARTICLE in the war academy.
3a. There are some issues with plots I still don't understand. If a plot is listed as 1 coin, 1 food, it will give those 2 benefits even without an improvement right? I notice a lot of water tiles have coins on them, but I can only ever do anything to the ones with fish/crabs. Am I missing some method of developing these aquatic coin tiles?
No, the aquatic tiles cannot be improved unless they contain seafood, with two exceptions. A lighthouse will give you +1 food on every water tile (but you can only build it in coastal cities); and the Moai Statues national wonder will give you +1 hammer on every water tile, but only in the city where it's built.
3b. Food production is something I have trouble with as well. I've read in some places that farms are all you should be building unless the tile resources absolutely point to a cottage, mine, etc. In other places I read you should build no more than 2 farms per city, esp. for a Financial civ. I try to balance my food bar and my cottages, but my cities have food production that varies wildly. One turn they can have a 75% food bar, the next turn 25% and starving (this is a slight exaggeration, I think). It can happen without border expansion, but my cities most often become unhappy/starving right after a border pop. Suffice to say I don't really know what's going on, or how I should pool my resources to combat the food problem.
As a beginner, you should be running a cottage economy--trying to place and work cottages on as many tiles as possible. I generally prefer to put cottages on grassland and floodplain tiles and farms on plains tiles. However, you also need to work some hammer tiles that usually are low on food. For the city to support its population and grow, you need a food surplus. Ideally, you should ensure that at least one food resource (grains, seafood, livestock) is within the city's fat cross of workable tiles. Even so, some cities will require extra farms in order to both grow and work all the available tiles.
There are ways to calculate this, but for a beginner, just look at each tile you want to work and realize that the citizen working that tile needs 2 food to sustain him. And you'll need additional food beyond that for the city to grow. So if a citizen is working a 1 food or no food tile, you need to compensate for that--either with a high food tile or with a farm. If you want to work a plains hill mine, for example (no food, 4 hammers), you'll need to have at least a 3 food surplus from other tiles (2 food to support the citizen working the mine and at least 1 food, preferably more, to grow). Keep this in mind as you examine the city, decide which tiles to work, and how to improve the other ones.
4. Specialists are another thing I don't understand, nor do I specialize cities. I'd never seen a city that had a majority of production resources (i.e. mountains) until my last game. But when I founded that city it quickly began to starve since there were no food resources and windmills weren't cutting it. I sometimes specialize 1 or 2 cities to military unit production, but that usually only culminates in the Modern or Future age when I have all the appropriate wonders. As far as specializing in commerce or research...I don't understand why it's preferable to having an evenly formed city that can do both, and can still build worth a damn.
First off, mountains (called peaks in the game), can't be worked; I suspect you're referring to hills. As I mentioned above, food is crucial. Try to have at least one food resource in the fat cross, more if possible. Production cities, because its citizens work a lot of high-hammer/low-food tiles, need additional food. So no cottages; farm everything you can. You may need to use some windmills. Remember that once you have researched Civil Service you can chain irrigate, meaning you can have irrigation spread from a distant water source via tiles that are adjacent to one another horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
City specialization is another big topic. The idea is priorities. You don't want to wait until the modern age for the city to become productive. Specialization helps you decide what to build
first in each city, and it allows you to maximize that city's contributions to your civ as early as possible. So for example, in your best commerce city, you'll want to build a market, grocer, and bank, as well as a library, university, and observatory (because commerce gets converted into both gold and research based upon the science slider). Those builds take precedence over other buildings such as barracks and drydocks in that city. On the other hand, in a production city, you'll want to prioritize a forge and military buildings and you may never build commerce or science multipliers, focusing on units instead.
5a. I say I like wars, but I apparently don't understand the military too well. I've read about people "rushing" opponents either with that one (Maya?) civ's UUs or simply with Swordsmen or Warriors. By the time my cities are strong enough to crank out something like a Warrior or Swordsman at a reasonable rate, all the other civs have cities full of Archers that pretty much destroy anything I throw at them. Can someone explain how soon you "rush" opponent cities (start building Warriors on Turn 1?) or any tips for later rushes with Swords/Axemen?
I've written a whole article on this, but generally, you (a) build only two,
maybe three cities--your capital and a city to claim a strategic resource (usually copper); (b) you adopt the Slavery civic; (c) you build, chop, and whip as many units in as short a time as you can, then (d) you attack your nearest opponent when their cities are only defended by Archers, and by a very small number of them at that, and when their cities' cultural defenses are quite low since you have no way of lowering them until Construction and Catapults. This works best on the slower game speeds like Epic and Marathon, but you can make it work on Normal speed too.
5b. War question two: most of the time I wait until the Modern age to start warring. It seems like by the time I start building some other age's units, they are obsoleted within a few turns. And this is on Epic! However, more recently I decided to try an early war with my first gunpowder unit, the Musketman.
I was a middling civ in the ranks (around 917 pts in that bar on the right side of the screen) and my opponent was Cyrus, who was at the bottom with 547 pts. I loaded 2 East Indiamen full of Catapaults, and 2 full of Musketmen and sent them to Cyrus' lone island (by this time I had 8 or 9 islands colonized, 1 or 2 with multiple cities). After crushing his Galleys, I unloaded the Catapaults and Musketmen and let the latter pulverize the countryside while the Catapaults started lowering the defenses of my first target city. Cyrus' city was populated by 4 or 5 soldiers, a mix of Spearmen and Macemen. With city defenses at 0, my Catapaults didn't have very good odds so I sent them on to work at the next city. However, my 8 Musketmen had 13.85 v 8.50-10.00 odds against Cyrus' soldiers so I sent them in. All of them died.
I've had other incidents like that where Gunships or Modern Armors were taken down by things like Musketmen or War Elephants. Does teching up your armies not matter? Should I just be producing as many units as I can before attacking?
You're only using half the potential of Catapults.
A basic principle of warfare in Civ IV is the "suicide cat". Catapults, like aquarium fish, are born to die. Yes, they get lousy odds. But they
increase the odds for later units and, furthermore, when they attack, they cause collateral damage, which means they
damage other units beside the one they're attacking directly. So yes, your Cats will get lousy odds and you'll lose several. Build more. Divide their duties; give a half-dozen or so Cats Barrage and Accuracy promotions and use them to remove cultural defenses, and give all the others City Raider. Never use the former for collateral damage attacks unless you're desperate; use the CR Cats for suicide attacks.
By the way, I'd also say you're using the wrong units. Macemen are better city attackers than Musketmen because they can receive City Raider promotions. Muskets are better for city and stack defense, and for attacking enemy units in the open field rather than in cities. And by the time you have Muskets, you should have Trebuchets, which are also much better city attackers than Catapults (they have a built-in +100% city attack bonus).
As for the long odds battles of older units versus newer, those are rare and usually only happen if you sacrifice many, many similar units first. The AI is notorious for this. A small number of Infantry can hold out against and eventually defeat a large number of Horse Archers or Knights. However, make sure you have enough, so yes, don't rely on just one or two modern units.
6. Speaking of techs, at what rate do most people research? I get antsy if I go below 80% research rate, and I rarely if ever touch the other sliders. I usually research military/economics related stuff and leave the religion and culture to trading when I feel I need it. If I ever build up some gold, I up the research rate to 100% and keep it there till it is forcibly lowered. Once I hit Future Tech I usually turn research off and put commerce all the way up so I can produce my armies with Universal Suffrage.
Let me put it this way: 12 to 20 cities researching at 50% on the slider is much better than 4 to 6 cities researching at 80%. In other words, build your empire early and don't worry so much about maxing out the slider. For beginners, I usually recommend the "60% rule": expand or conquer until the slider has to be at 60% or thereabouts to produce a gold-per-turn surplus. Then stop and focus on the economy (cottages, commerce multipliers, courthouses, etc.). Once the slider can go above 60%, it's time to expand again.
7. I once founded a religion in one game because I read that it brings in lots of money through "shrines." I sent out missionaries and spread my religion to almost every other city, and I got a couple of Great Prophets, but I never saw an option for any kind of shrine. Is there a point to researching religion aside from some of the useful Wonders (i.e. Oracle)?
Send the Great Prophet to the holy city, the city where the religion was founded (it has a star on the religion's emblem in the city bar; the Religion Advisor will also list the holy city for each religion). When the GP is in the holy city, the option to found a shrine will appear.
I usually prefer to let the AIs found religions and build shrines. Then I take the holy cities from their cold, dead hands.