Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[VollAufRisiko]

Wow, this is a great forum. I usually play MMOs, and their forums are incredibly useless. Thanks for all the great answers.

So, here is my next question, and maybe there is a good strategy article somewhere that explains this and someone could link me to it. I have been in a war for 3000 years. I am slowly winning, but I think I am getting so far behind the rest of the world I will have no hope of winning. What did I do wrong?

I am playing Persia on noble. This is my first game that I am going to play to the (bitter?) end. I played CivII a lot back in the day, but never Civ III, so I am really out of date. From what I have read on these forums, it seems essential to eliminate a player early. Isabella is right next door to me (the only player I border since I am on a penninsula) and she declares war about 1500BC. I knew 4-5 players and could see I was #2 and Isabella was #1 in score. We have been slugging it out ever since and its nearly 1500AD now. We are both way behind in score now I am in last with 850 points (1-3 have over 1100,) and Isabella is just a few points ahead of me. We started the war with

I have destroyed 2 of her border towns and just captured one of her 4 major towns, right next to Madrid (her capital, right?). Other than that, nothing has happened. We have both lost tons of units and spent a tremendous amount of time/money doing nothing.

I think I should have built up larger armies before hitting her cities. I would go in with 3-4 units, capture one of the border towns, then lose it again before backup arrived. I eventually razed the border towns. I finally got one of her good cities by stacking 5 catapults, 2 knights, macemen, swordsmen and spearmen.

Should I have tried to pile up more guys before going on the offensive?
Should I have just played defense until I could get peace? Should I have built the buildings in one of my 3 cities (Yes, only have three. She hit me early so I had not expanded much at the time) instead of making all of them make only military units?

I think I can defeat Spain, but after that I am pretty sure I am going to get crushed. Should I bail now and try another game, or fight it out and learn something in the defeat?

 

[Supr49er]

Have you looked at the War Academy yet?

I also recommend Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners and Sulla's Civilization IV Walkthrough.

Keep asking questions.

And, Welcome to the Forums VollAufRisiko.

 

[henrebotha]

Wow, this is a great forum. I usually play MMOs, and their forums are incredibly useless. Thanks for all the great answers.

So, here is my next question, and maybe there is a good strategy article somewhere that explains this and someone could link me to it. I have been in a war for 3000 years. I am slowly winning, but I think I am getting so far behind the rest of the world I will have no hope of winning. What did I do wrong?

I am playing Persia on noble. This is my first game that I am going to play to the (bitter?) end. I played CivII a lot back in the day, but never Civ III, so I am really out of date. From what I have read on these forums, it seems essential to eliminate a player early. Isabella is right next door to me (the only player I border since I am on a penninsula) and she declares war about 1500BC. I knew 4-5 players and could see I was #2 and Isabella was #1 in score. We have been slugging it out ever since and its nearly 1500AD now. We are both way behind in score now I am in last with 850 points (1-3 have over 1100,) and Isabella is just a few points ahead of me. We started the war with

I have destroyed 2 of her border towns and just captured one of her 4 major towns, right next to Madrid (her capital, right?). Other than that, nothing has happened. We have both lost tons of units and spent a tremendous amount of time/money doing nothing.

I think I should have built up larger armies before hitting her cities. I would go in with 3-4 units, capture one of the border towns, then lose it again before backup arrived. I eventually razed the border towns. I finally got one of her good cities by stacking 5 catapults, 2 knights, macemen, swordsmen and spearmen.

Should I have tried to pile up more guys before going on the offensive?
Should I have just played defense until I could get peace? Should I have built the buildings in one of my 3 cities (Yes, only have three. She hit me early so I had not expanded much at the time) instead of making all of them make only military units?

I think I can defeat Spain, but after that I am pretty sure I am going to get crushed. Should I bail now and try another game, or fight it out and learn something in the defeat?

Your use of "towns" to refer to cities is going to confuse a lot of people.

Post a savegame and/or screenshots if you want more detailed help - the following is simply general advice.

City specialisation is a strategy that most people here set a lot of stock by. It simply comes down to specialised cities being far more efficient than jack-of-all-trades ones. There are indeed times when it is advantageous to build weapons in every city (for instance, when you would be utterly annihilated otherwise); but for the most part, it is sensible to restrict your cities to very specific purposes.

You should build far more units before sending them out. If you build 25 units, rather wait for them all to finish and send them out en masse than send them out in groups of 5 - collateral damage and counter-attacks will be the death of you. (Simply put, collateral damage (such as from siege weapons) can only affect a certain number of units per hit, so the more units you pile on, the more will escape taking collateral damage.)

When attacking cities, use siege units first to bombard away cultural defenses, and then throw some of them at the city - you will lose almost every siege unit you attack with, but they will weaken all of the defenders (via collateral damage) enough that your main raiders will be able to take the city with minimal losses. And remember to bring garrison troops along! (Or at least make sure they arrive by the time your stack of doom has finished healing up.) When you are taking enemy cities, you should be producing siege units and garrison troops back home - if your stack is properly defended, it should be taking minimal losses.

 

[VollAufRisiko]

Yeah the groups of 5-6 got totally crushed. So I guess even for early wars it is best to stack 10-15 units before going on the offensive? I just read the Stack of Doom Guide, and I assume that is basically the authority on the subject.

I will look at the other links you posted. I hadnt gotten that far into the forums yet.

So, in my war (a few posts up), is it just taking WAY too long? I thought I would be able to capture some territory and actually get an advantage over the rest of the civs, and now I am at the very bottom. Should I have tried to end the war 1000 years ago?

And thanks for the welcome!

 

[Roland Johansen]

Edit: beaten to it by Roland Johansen

Hey, I have to get to those 1000 posts in this thread somehow...
I wonder if someone ever got 1000 posts within a single thread in this forum. I wonder what it tells about me. I guess, it's better to do it in this thread than in the 'Hitler should be in the game', 'Poland should be in the game' or 'which is a better game, civ4 or civ3' threads.

By the way, you gave a far more detailed answer.

Wow, this is a great forum. I usually play MMOs, and their forums are incredibly useless. Thanks for all the great answers.

Different types of players, different people. Also, there is excellent moderation on this forum, that really helps.

So, here is my next question, and maybe there is a good strategy article somewhere that explains this and someone could link me to it. I have been in a war for 3000 years. I am slowly winning, but I think I am getting so far behind the rest of the world I will have no hope of winning. What did I do wrong?

...

I think I can defeat Spain, but after that I am pretty sure I am going to get crushed. Should I bail now and try another game, or fight it out and learn something in the defeat?

In many strategy games, battles are typically won by creating a critical level of military superiority locally. If the enemy has 5 cities, then you don't attack them all at once. You slowly build your strength while holding your enemy at bay and then with a critical thrust of strength, you take and hold one of his cities. At that moment, you reduced your enemies production strength by 20% and increased your own. If you are able to do this once, then you can do it again and it will become easier with each victory as your production power increases and your opponents production power decreases.

In civilisation IV, there are a number of technicalities with the way battles between units are resolved that are very important to understand. If you understand these well enough, then you can win battles against the AI with surprisingly low losses. I, for instance will typically lose only 1/4th-1/10th of the number of troops of an enemy civilisation if I'm at war with an equal tech level opponent. If I can get a technological superiority, then the win-loss ratio becomes really appalling for the AI. In this game, the AI controlling the battle strategy of the opposing civilisations is actually pretty poor compared to experienced players.

This articles explains the technicalities of civ-combat, but it is rather mathematical in its explanation:Combat Explained.

I'll give some highlights:
-Cities have a defence bonus. It's critical to use siege units, bombers and ships to bombard this bonus to 0% before attacking.
-Some units can inflict collateral damage (siege units, bombers, battleships). This means that the unit will not only damage and maybe destroy the main defender, but also many other units in the enemy stack. As wounded units are a lot weaker than healthy units, first weakening a stack of units before finishing it off with other units can be a very cost efficient way of defeating a stack of units. You might lose the first units that inflict the collateral damage, but the other battles with that stack will be won.
-Wounded units can heal to full strength again without any cost. Thus you will want to save your own wounded units and kill wounded enemy units. It's no use to lose 5 units to an enemy city, critically wounding the defenders without the ability to finish them off.
-Experience: experienced units are a lot better than inexperienced units. Don't risk your experienced troops without good reason. Pick promotions that suit the tasks that these units need to perform. Note that you can delay promotions until the moment when you know which promotions are most useful.
-Counter units: know which units counter each other. Don't attack a group of pikemen with knights. In a stack, the best counter unit defends. So by mixing the units in a stack, you can create a stack that can defend itself well against every type of attack.

Oh, by the way: I don't agree that finishing off an opponent early in the game is crucial to victory. That really depends a bit on the type of games that you play. If the space between civilisations is large because you play on huge maps with the standard number or fewer civilisations, then I don't think an early offensive is the best option. On small maps, it can be very efficient if you're good at war and have the right resources early in the game.

A war can be a very beneficial undertaking if you can win it quickly. A long drawn out conflict is bad for both sides of the conflict. After you've gone on the offensive, you should be able to capture a city at least once every 3-4-5 turns until the war ends. Some quick wars by experienced players will result in multiple cities captured per turn. However, that is usually extremely dependent on a technological advantage.

 

[henrebotha]

You should have:

1) Decided you are going to try and make the most of Isabella's declaration of war by taking some of her cities (or destroying her completely); or

2) Ended the war as soon as possible.

When you war, you set specific objectives, you meet them, and then you end the war as soon as possible. You want to avoid mission creep as it forces you to act in ways you were not specifically prepared to. I usually sue for peace the exact moment I take my objective. If you are unsuccessful in meeting your objectives, you should cut your losses and try to bargain for a peace treaty - otherwise you are only magnifying an already expensive loss.

EDIT: In early wars (here I'm talking Warrior, Axeman or Chariot/Immortal rushes), I stack 10-15 units before going off on my killing spree - nevermind later wars, where cities are well-fortified and the enemy likely has troops to counter-attack with.

 

[VollAufRisiko]

Well I played out the game. I ended up destroying Isabella. The war lasted until 1850 or so, and by the end I was REALLY behind (I just upgraded my knights to cavalry and was feeling better about my situation, then I saw a tank just over the border with the Germans and that feeling of accomplishment suddenly disappeared.)

I took her out by stacking a bunch of catapults with lots of knights and macemen and ended up not losing more than one or two non-catapults per city. So basically followed the strategies you mentioned above.

I kept out of war for the rest of the game (I was at war with people from time to time, but we never actually fought) and I just tried to trade as much tech around as possible to get back in the running. Some other race (the one that founds Mecca) ended up building a spaceship and winning in 1950 or so. I was 4th of 8 in score, so I ended up rebounding pretty well.

MORE QUESTIONS:

Culture:
When wiping out the Spanish I kept her largest cities instead of razing them. However, many were quickly taken over by the Germans due to their culture boundries. How do you avoid that? I had huge armies in there, I had them build all the culture buildings they could, but I lost the four best Spanish cities I had conquered. How do you avoid that aside from using a Great Artist?

Can someone explain the culture borders to me? I understand the individual city borders and the culture level of the city. Does the border of the whole Civ at a specific point (say, the squares right next to a newly conquered city) have the strength of the nearest city, or of the Civ as a whole? I don't understand why the German borders swept over half my land.


City Specialization:
I never ended up getting my cities specialized as I wanted. I had my capital with lots of production and military buildings, and I had one other city with lots (is 200 a lot?) of culture. Since it was 1850AD before I was even trying to specialize I figured it was too late anyway, but I didn't know what city types I needed and what type of terrain was ideal.

Great People: need lots of pop for lots of specialists for GP points. So anywhere with lots of land to farm.
Science: needs lots of trade, so grassland with a river for cottages.
Culture: cottages again?
Production: mines, mills, etc?
Missing something?


Thanks for the help. I am looking forward to starting my next game this evening. I am debating either a cultural victory or quick invasion of civs early on. We will see what sounds fun this evening.

 

[IAM]

Once you have drama then you can 'build' culture in the city. It will probably give you faster border pops than other paths. Building culture converts all to culture. Near the bottom left, of the city screen, is a slide showing your culture and how soon you will pop.

Try one city as a great person farm. This city must have lots of food and run specialist. For the rest of your cities if you are going space race I use 80% for teching 20% military production. Early war I'd concentrate maybe 40% production cities. Of course it's all a rule of thumb and is very map leader etc. specific.

If culture was a problem in the last game maybe useing a creative leader will help a bit.

 

[VollAufRisiko]

Ok, I think I am going to try for a cultural victory next game, and I think I will try out noble again.

I am thinking that Spiritual or Philosophical are probably the best traits for this because I can found a religion faster and get lots of great people to help me out. Maybe industrial would be good to get some early wonders, like oracle, Stonehenge and pyramids.

Do you think it would be easier to play on a large land mass with lots of players (pangea mabye) so my religion can spread faster, or would it work better to be relatively isolated and hope I don't get dragged into another war?

I am sure there is a good walk through for culture wins somewhere. Anyone know the link? I found some tips/tricks, but they seem to be more confusing than helpful since I dont know the basics they are talking about.


EDIT: I found a few about how to win on Deity. They sure make it sound easy. I assume that is not actually the case though. Ill try culture out and see.

 

[IAM]

Do you think it would be easier to play on a large land mass with lots of players (pangea mabye) so my religion can spread faster, or would it work better to be relatively isolated and hope I don't get dragged into another war?

If you plan to found early relegions then a single land mass will help. You can spam missionarys once you build a monastery or get organized relegion. At first I'll send them out to AIs with no relegion and convert the capital later in the game I just click on auto spread. In fact I ussually have a production city do only that. I play on huge maps with lots 18 civs. You'll get better relations with AIs that have the same religion and once you build the holy shrine you'll get from every city in the world with that relegion.

I'm currently playing a game on Monarch huge pangea as Hatty and founded confucianism and it's at over 45% influence. Next is Hinduism at around 35%. I razed Gandis budda founding city Infidels!

 

[henrebotha]

Well I played out the game. I ended up destroying Isabella. The war lasted until 1850 or so, and by the end I was REALLY behind (I just upgraded my knights to cavalry and was feeling better about my situation, then I saw a tank just over the border with the Germans and that feeling of accomplishment suddenly disappeared.)

I took her out by stacking a bunch of catapults with lots of knights and macemen and ended up not losing more than one or two non-catapults per city. So basically followed the strategies you mentioned above.

I kept out of war for the rest of the game (I was at war with people from time to time, but we never actually fought) and I just tried to trade as much tech around as possible to get back in the running. Some other race (the one that founds Mecca) ended up building a spaceship and winning in 1950 or so. I was 4th of 8 in score, so I ended up rebounding pretty well.

MORE QUESTIONS:

Culture:
When wiping out the Spanish I kept her largest cities instead of razing them. However, many were quickly taken over by the Germans due to their culture boundries. How do you avoid that? I had huge armies in there, I had them build all the culture buildings they could, but I lost the four best Spanish cities I had conquered. How do you avoid that aside from using a Great Artist?

Can someone explain the culture borders to me? I understand the individual city borders and the culture level of the city. Does the border of the whole Civ at a specific point (say, the squares right next to a newly conquered city) have the strength of the nearest city, or of the Civ as a whole? I don't understand why the German borders swept over half my land.


City Specialization:
I never ended up getting my cities specialized as I wanted. I had my capital with lots of production and military buildings, and I had one other city with lots (is 200 a lot?) of culture. Since it was 1850AD before I was even trying to specialize I figured it was too late anyway, but I didn't know what city types I needed and what type of terrain was ideal.

Great People: need lots of pop for lots of specialists for GP points. So anywhere with lots of land to farm.
Science: needs lots of trade, so grassland with a river for cottages.
Culture: cottages again?
Production: mines, mills, etc?
Missing something?


Thanks for the help. I am looking forward to starting my next game this evening. I am debating either a cultural victory or quick invasion of civs early on. We will see what sounds fun this evening.

Maces + Kiniggits + Cats was good because they cover each other's weaknesses nicely (Knights fight off the Maces and Crossbows that your Maces are vulnerable to; Maces fight off Pikes). However, you should consider making proper use of Knights' fast movement. If you can promote a few Knights (or earlier units, and then upgrade them) with strong Combat and anti-Melee promotions (to better withstand Pikemen), you can send out a stack of them to run around in enemy territory and pillage important improvements (like Mines on Copper, Iron and Aluminium, and Wells on Oil; also pillaging Cottages is insanely lucrative and could potentially bring your rival's economy and research to a standstill).

Remember to look at a city before you deal the killing blow, and decide whether or not you need to keep it. Sometimes, razing the city is a better idea, as it keeps your economy from suffering and removes the need to divert hammers into protecting it. However, this obviously leaves the land ripe for settling, and since you're focused on war, one of the other players will typically get a Settler there first. To help you decide, take a look at any Wonders that are present in the city, and which resources (or just good tiles) surround it.

If Izzy's cities were close (2-3 tiles) to German ones, it is very likely that they've been under high cultural pressure for a long time. The moment a city is captured, it loses ALL generated culture and ALL culture-generating buildings (except in a few exceptional cases). In other words, you most likely had Spain and Germany on about even footing for culture - and then ripped the carpet out from underneath the Spanish cities. It would take a lot of garrison troops (probably at least 10 units) and a lot of culture generation (be it by constructing culture buildings, running Artists, or building culture) to push back the German influence. (This is a big part of why I hate late-game wars.)

Culture is measured on a per-tile basis. Therefore, even after you take a Spanish city, the land around it is covered in Spanish and (apparently) German culture, which it would take you another three millennia to counteract. (If you switch to Globe View, you can turn on the culture view to see whose culture is strong where.) The only way to get rid of rival culture is to utterly destroy that civ.

Try to decide on a city's specialization when you found it. Obviously it's okay if you want to build a Granary and a Theatre first and see how things pan out or whatever; but don't start building a Bank and a Barracks before you know what you need the city for (assuming non-exceptional circumstances).

GP farm: lots of grassland, floodplains, and high-food resources, and access to fresh water. (Note that building Wonders can also help with GP farming, so if you want you can trade a few Farm tiles for Mined hills.)
Production: you want enough food to be able to work every tile; and beyond that, hills (for Mines) and riverside plains (for Watermills). Production resources help too - Iron on a hill is pretty sweet.
Commerce: grassland and rivers (not lakes, specifically rivers).

I should note here that both Commerce and GP farm cities can be used for either money or science. For instance, in a GP farm, if you run only Scientists and make sure you build every Science-enhancing building while ignoring Gold-boosting ones, you can have a veritable Science powerhouse (I usually do this, and end up with one city generating more than 60% of my civ's Science per turn). Replace those Scientists with Artists and you have a great Culture city (and if you build a Wonder or seven there, even better).

Ok, I think I am going to try for a cultural victory next game, and I think I will try out noble again.

I am thinking that Spiritual or Philosophical are probably the best traits for this because I can found a religion faster and get lots of great people to help me out. Maybe industrial would be good to get some early wonders, like oracle, Stonehenge and pyramids.

Do you think it would be easier to play on a large land mass with lots of players (pangea mabye) so my religion can spread faster, or would it work better to be relatively isolated and hope I don't get dragged into another war?

I am sure there is a good walk through for culture wins somewhere. Anyone know the link? I found some tips/tricks, but they seem to be more confusing than helpful since I dont know the basics they are talking about.


EDIT: I found a few about how to win on Deity. They sure make it sound easy. I assume that is not actually the case though. Ill try culture out and see.

If you want to play a heavy religion game, Pangaea is obviously better because you need to spread your religion to get any significant benefit from it.

Also, alongside Ind, Phi and Spi, I would say Creative is a wonderful trait if you are gunning for a Culture win.

 

[IAM]

Correction: I said earlier that drama lets you build culture it's music. Sorry.

 

[bgast1]

I just bought a new laptop. I installed Civ IV and received error messages about compatibility issues. Does Civ IV run on Vista? Is there something that I can download to make it run? I don't know anything about Vista, but I think I hate it, so far. I'm thinking about reverting to XP but it will void the warranty on my laptop.

Also, I think that I lost my book. Is this forum a good substitute or should I search harder for my book?

 

[CCRunner]

I have vista and it works fine.

As for the manual... the forum is good enough if you know the basics of what button does what.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Maces + Kiniggits + Cats was good because they cover each other's weaknesses nicely (Knights fight off the Maces and Crossbows that your Maces are vulnerable to; Maces fight off Pikes). However, you should consider making proper use of Knights' fast movement. If you can promote a few Knights (or earlier units, and then upgrade them) with strong Combat and anti-Melee promotions (to better withstand Pikemen), you can send out a stack of them to run around in enemy territory and pillage important improvements (like Mines on Copper, Iron and Aluminium, and Wells on Oil; also pillaging Cottages is insanely lucrative and could potentially bring your rival's economy and research to a standstill).

A note though, it's really not worth pillaging the enemy's lands if you intend on actually taking the cities nearby before the end of the war. Otherwise you're just shooting yourself in the feet - you gain perhaps 20-50 gold from pillaging a town, then lose out on 40-70 turns of making 2-5 gold per turn.

Basically, pillaging is usually ONLY worth it when you don't think you have any hope of capturing your opponents' cities anytime soon. In this situation, you just want to damage their economy as much as possible before ending the war, so pillaging is actually useful. Aside from this, it's generally not worth taking the time and effort to pillage.

Remember to look at a city before you deal the killing blow, and decide whether or not you need to keep it. Sometimes, razing the city is a better idea, as it keeps your economy from suffering and removes the need to divert hammers into protecting it. However, this obviously leaves the land ripe for settling, and since you're focused on war, one of the other players will typically get a Settler there first. To help you decide, take a look at any Wonders that are present in the city, and which resources (or just good tiles) surround it.

Another important factor is the size of the city - typically most cities above size 5, and certainly above size 10, are worth keeping simply because of the net commerce/production return you'll get from those citizens. Founding a new city (if you do it) will mean that you start at size 1 and grow from there, losing out on all the extra citizens.

Anyway, I actually find it's usually worth keeping most cities - I typically only raze those in really poor locations.

If Izzy's cities were close (2-3 tiles) to German ones, it is very likely that they've been under high cultural pressure for a long time. The moment a city is captured, it loses ALL generated culture and ALL culture-generating buildings (except in a few exceptional cases). In other words, you most likely had Spain and Germany on about even footing for culture - and then ripped the carpet out from underneath the Spanish cities. It would take a lot of garrison troops (probably at least 10 units) and a lot of culture generation (be it by constructing culture buildings, running Artists, or building culture) to push back the German influence. (This is a big part of why I hate late-game wars.)

Indeed. The only real solution in this situation is to go and take over the civ that's putting cultural pressure on your cities.

If you want to play a heavy religion game, Pangaea is obviously better because you need to spread your religion to get any significant benefit from it.

Larger maps with more civs are good too.

Also, alongside Ind, Phi and Spi, I would say Creative is a wonderful trait if you are gunning for a Culture win.

Actually Creative has very little influence on a cultural win. You can prove this for yourself: even over the entire course of a game, the Creative trait will contribute very little to a cultural win. Say your game lasts 500 turns (a reasonable estimate for Normal speed). Then Creative gives you 2*500 = 1,000 free culture in your capital, and less in the other cities that are founded later (maybe 600-800). The threshold for "Legendary" culture is 50,000 on normal speed. Thus the Creative trait gives you about 2% of the required culture for your capital, and 1.2-1.6% of the required culture for your other cultural win cities. Basically, it's insignificant compared to the effect of (say) getting an early religion, or an early wonder, or a nice river city site for cottages (for maximum culture from the culture slider later).

 

[r_rolo1]

Sorry, but your maths is a little flawed, Lord parkin Remember that the Creative trait culture is raw culture and not modified one.

Not that you conclusion is wrong ( Creative, if only measured by the 2 bonus, adds very little to a culture win.... if you add the half-priced building things can be somewhat diferent, but not much ) , but the maths in there is more a bottom limit than anything else.

 

[henrebotha]

I just bought a new laptop. I installed Civ IV and received error messages about compatibility issues. Does Civ IV run on Vista? Is there something that I can download to make it run? I don't know anything about Vista, but I think I hate it, so far. I'm thinking about reverting to XP but it will void the warranty on my laptop.

DON'T REVERT. VISTA IS GREAT. STOP BEING BRAINWASHED BY UNINFORMED COMPUTER USERS. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH VISTA (unless you're a sound engineer, but then you want to be working on a Mac anyway). Stick with it, you'll be glad in the end. I run Civ IV on Vista without having to use the compatibility settings. Just make sure you've patched the game to the latest version; and if it persists with compatability problems, right-click the game shortcut, click "Properties", go to "Compatability" at the top, and set the game to run under Windows XP mode - that helps for some games.

A note though, it's really not worth pillaging the enemy's lands if you intend on actually taking the cities nearby before the end of the war. Otherwise you're just shooting yourself in the feet - you gain perhaps 20-50 gold from pillaging a town, then lose out on 40-70 turns of making 2-5 gold per turn.

Basically, pillaging is usually ONLY worth it when you don't think you have any hope of capturing your opponents' cities anytime soon. In this situation, you just want to damage their economy as much as possible before ending the war, so pillaging is actually useful. Aside from this, it's generally not worth taking the time and effort to pillage.

I should have mentioned (though it's quite obvious) that it's generally a good idea when planning to raze a city - not so much when capturing one.

Another important factor is the size of the city - typically most cities above size 5, and certainly above size 10, are worth keeping simply because of the net commerce/production return you'll get from those citizens. Founding a new city (if you do it) will mean that you start at size 1 and grow from there, losing out on all the extra citizens.

Anyway, I actually find it's usually worth keeping most cities - I typically only raze those in really poor locations.

On the difficulty level I play at (Prince), the AI generally has loads of crappy cities that will harm my economy more than they will benefit it - hence I tend to raze a lot. (I also suck at recovering my economy when I am playing a conquest game, but that's another story entirely. )

Actually Creative has very little influence on a cultural win. You can prove this for yourself: even over the entire course of a game, the Creative trait will contribute very little to a cultural win. Say your game lasts 500 turns (a reasonable estimate for Normal speed). Then Creative gives you 2*500 = 1,000 free culture in your capital, and less in the other cities that are founded later (maybe 600-800). The threshold for "Legendary" culture is 50,000 on normal speed. Thus the Creative trait gives you about 2% of the required culture for your capital, and 1.2-1.6% of the required culture for your other cultural win cities. Basically, it's insignificant compared to the effect of (say) getting an early religion, or an early wonder, or a nice river city site for cottages (for maximum culture from the culture slider later).

There's also the boost to culture-producing buildings, which I figure is the real benefit here - getting a Theatre early gives you more culture, and (if you're not in Caste) access to more Artists, which gives you more culture. And Libraries can take a little while to build in the early game - the production boost again means more culture earlier.

 

[Roland Johansen]

MORE QUESTIONS:[/U]

Culture:
When wiping out the Spanish I kept her largest cities instead of razing them. However, many were quickly taken over by the Germans due to their culture boundries. How do you avoid that? I had huge armies in there, I had them build all the culture buildings they could, but I lost the four best Spanish cities I had conquered. How do you avoid that aside from using a Great Artist?

Can someone explain the culture borders to me? I understand the individual city borders and the culture level of the city. Does the border of the whole Civ at a specific point (say, the squares right next to a newly conquered city) have the strength of the nearest city, or of the Civ as a whole? I don't understand why the German borders swept over half my land.

The culture aspect of this game is not well understood by many players, mainly because it is really poorly documented. One element is already mentioned in one of the answers that you got: culture is present on tiles and cannot decrease. The only way to remove the cultural presence of a certain civilisation from a tile is by destroying that civilisation. You can suppress the cultural influence of another civilisation by making sure the tiles are not within the cultural radius of any of their cities, but this doesn't make the culture disappear. If at any time in the future, some city of theirs expands its borders into those tiles again, then the culture they have build up on those tiles in the past is still there. The civilisation with the most culture on a tile and with a city which borders encompass the tile will control the tile.

Another extremely important factor is how tiles accumulate culture. The culture on a tile is not equal to the culture inside cities and not equal to the sum of the culture of close cities or even something close to that. The main reason is that tiles that are in the inner culture rings of a city get bonus culture once that city expands into a higher culture status. For instance, when a city expands its borders for the 2-nd time (100 culture at normal speed, 40% cultural defence), then its culture will spread in a third ring and those tiles will start accumulating culture at the rate of culture production of the city. But the tiles in the second ring will accumulate culture at a rate of 20+the culture production of the city and the tiles in the first ring will accumulate culture at a rate of 40+the culture production of the city. You can imagine that an old city can accumulate a huge amount of culture in its inner ring tiles. A new city which starts with 0 culture will take a really long time to overcome that culture.

The best way to push back foreign culture from your lands:
1) capture the foreign cities that exert control over the tile so that the cultural influence in these tiles is suppressed (but not removed!). Note that the newly captured cities might have the same problem again from further foreign cities. You might have to stop conquering at some point.
2) expand the culture of captured cities to the 100 or 500 mark (normal speed culture values for cultural expansion into a third and fourth ring) quickly so that the inner circles of these captured cities get the bonus 20, 40 or 60 culture per turn. This way it is possible to get cultural superiority in the tiles of the closer culture rings after a while.

The best way to stop cities from rebelling and converting to another civilisation:
1) Do the things mentioned above to push back foreign culture. A city can only culture flip to another civilisation when the other civilisation controls the majority of the culture in the centre tile of the city and has cultural borders that extent up to this centre tile.
2) Park a lot of strong (modern units are better than older units) units in the city. You can see the chance of a culture flip mentioned inside the city close to the culture bar. With enough units, the percentage will be 0. You can see the percentage go down as you add units. Once you push back the foreign culture borders and gain a bigger percentage of the culture in the centre tile, you need less units.

The above mentioned information can be found in much greater detail in this article:
Culture Mechanics Disassembled.

By the way, not everyone agrees on the advice that you get here (as you've seen in the discussion between henrebotha and Lord Parkin). There are many ways to play this game. You'll eventually find your own way, so don't blindly follow the advice that you get but try to see how it works for you.

Good luck.

 

[dalamb]

Basically, pillaging is usually ONLY worth it when you don't think you have any hope of capturing your opponents' cities anytime soon. In this situation, you just want to damage their economy as much as possible before ending the war, so pillaging is actually useful. Aside from this, it's generally not worth taking the time and effort to pillage.

Hmm. What about pillaging only the strategic resources? I was once attacking with Kheshiks and pillaged my opponent's copper even next to cities I wanted to keep so they couldn't build spearmen (or axemen, but the spears were what I was worried about). That might still fit your rubric because it was an early city and I had about 5 more to conquer, but I'm not sure how soon you meant by "anytime soon." I was starting to run low on Kehsiks, though, so ending the spearman threat was important to me!

 

[IAM]

Hmm. What about pillaging only the strategic resources? I was once attacking with Kheshiks and pillaged my opponent's copper even next to cities I wanted to keep so they couldn't build spearmen (or axemen, but the spears were what I was worried about). That might still fit your rubric because it was an early city and I had about 5 more to conquer, but I'm not sure how soon you meant by "anytime soon." I was starting to run low on Kehsiks, though, so ending the spearman threat was important to me!

I think that's still within the concept of what Lord Parkin said. First wars should ideally be quick so pillaging cottages or plantations of cities you'll be taking in the immediate future is counter-productive. By immediate future I mean including movement, bombardment, take city, heal repeat about 30 turns with one good stack. Pillaged cottages just take so long to recover once you have the city.

But eliminating an easily accesible copper resource that your opponent would have use of for 10 turns is a good idea. How many spears could they slave out?