Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[caliskier]

I thought this might be a newbie question so i thought I would post it here...

I am trying to increase my game and I so I watched a guy on youtube play the first 100 turns. He kept decreasing his research to 0% and then after a few turns he would increase it to 100%... Why?

I am playing on Nobel and I leave it 100% all the time until later in the game when the cost gets too high. I run into the issue of -$ with this, but i hit enought goodie huts and $400 - 3 per turn is not a big deal.


He was playing on monarch, and had a lot less $, could this be why or is there another reason to do this, and why all the way to 0% and not like 70% at least you are still researching, right?

What happens if you spend a turn with $0 and -$x per turn?

 

[GGracchus]

If you have $0 and are losing money and/or losing more money per turn than you have that turn means your slider drops to a point where you are making money/losing less money per turn than you have. If you are at 0% slider then you go into strike, when your units disband.

The system that the youtuber used is called binary research. It means that you spend several turns at 0% to get as much money as possible. You then go to 100% and tech really quickly while the money slowly runs down. If you time it right, you can hit the tech you want and then start saving money again. It's not a good idea to run the slider always at 100%, and lowering the tech slider so that you're losing less money is fine.

 

[God-Emperor]

Look into "binary research".

If you can't run 100% full time since it costs you money, switching back and forth between 0 and 100 can save you a small amount of research points. (At some point they changed when it rounds - it used to be rounded per city before adding them together but later it was civilization-wide, so it used to be that the rounding could cost you a research point and/or one gold per city, but these days it is just one for the entire civilization. But 1 per turn can still add up to a useful amount, particularly in the early game. Imagine if someone beats you to Liberalism by 1 turn because you were 50 research points short the previous turn - if you had done binary research for 100 turns or so and saved 50ish RP from being rounded away then you would have won the race and gotten the free tech.)

Early on it can be good to build up some cash before you get writing and finish building your first libraries. Once the libraries are built you switch to 100% research and let the saved money be used to fund the deficit. That way the saved money gets converted to research at a 1.25:1 ratio (if you have a library in every city) whereas running higher research before that essentially gets you 1:1.

But in general you would not be bouncing back and forth before you get writing since it just slows down getting writing (unless you are hit by that the first "running at 100% costs you money" condition and you are running out of money) - typically once you get writing you drop to 0% research until you get some libraries built (at least one or two, anyway - the bulk of your commerce is likely to be from your first city or two so the rest matter a lot less).

If you end a turn with 0 money and are at 100% commerce into cash but still losing money then your civilization will go on strike and start disbanding your units. It can be very hard to recover from this if you are not very close to doing something that gets you money - like capturing an enemy city (and probably razing it, since keeping would usually cost you even more money per turn), or researching the currency tech. Just pillaging one or two (or, in some cases, more) improvements per turn can keep you out of this situation right up until your enemy runs out of improvements.

 

[caliskier]

Ok thanks guys, but if I am at $400 and -$3 per turn, who cares in my case right? You only want to do binary research in you are looking at going to $0 before the tech is completed, correct?

 

[Lord Parkin]

That's correct, you wouldn't need to switch off 100% in that case. However, if you are able to keep the research slider at 100% many turns into the game and only lose 3 gpt, that probably signifies another problem - that you are expanding far too slowly. A good rule of thumb for expansion is that you should build cities until your break-even research rate is around 50-60%. Then recover for a while while you tech economic techs and grow cottages. This boosts the breakeven slider %, at which point you should expand more.

You definitely shouldn't be at -3 gpt with 100% research well into the game and not expanding ruthlessly. At least, not if you want to improve your game.

 

[caliskier]

That's correct, you wouldn't need to switch off 100% in that case. However, if you are able to keep the research slider at 100% many turns into the game and only lose 3 gpt, that probably signifies another problem - that you are expanding far too slowly. A good rule of thumb for expansion is that you should build cities until your break-even research rate is around 50-60%. Then recover for a while while you tech economic techs and grow cottages. This boosts the breakeven slider %, at which point you should expand more.

You definitely shouldn't be at -3 gpt with 100% research well into the game and not expanding ruthlessly. At least, not if you want to improve your game.

Yeah, I agree. I played on warlord level and won easily. I just wondered if there was some secret I did not know about. As I advance 2 higher levels I know I will not be able to operate like I do. Thx all

 

[nfw]

What the...!? Is this a bug?

My chariot had been there for many turns, as the warriors near the crab and iron, so how could the barbarian city pop up within 2 tiles of my unit?

 

[Abegweit]

Barb cities can spawn anywhere in the FOW. This is different from units.

 

[reddishrecue]

How do you get diplomatic victory? It says apostolic palace and united nations .

 

[GGracchus]

If all cities have AP religion or the UN is built, the secretary general/AP resident can call for a diplomatic victory. If a majority of votes are for one candidate above a certain threshold, the victory is achieved for that candidate. You can't have 75% of the votes by yourself.

 

[charity]

How do you delete a city? Is this possible? Sometimes i might accidentaly place a city in a bad spot and wish to delete it. Or I might be bankrupted and need to loose cities to start up my economy again.

 

[GGracchus]

How do you delete a city? Is this possible? Sometimes i might accidentaly place a city in a bad spot and wish to delete it. Or I might be bankrupted and need to loose cities to start up my economy again.

This irritates me, there is no way to do that. You could go into world builder and erase the city, but that's it, short of letting an opponent capture it and raze it.

 

[Sisiutil]

This irritates me, there is no way to do that. You could go into world builder and erase the city, but that's it, short of letting an opponent capture it and raze it.

You might also be able to gift it to a nearby civ.

 

[kcd_swede]

Ok thanks guys, but if I am at $400 and -$3 per turn, who cares in my case right? You only want to do binary research in you are looking at going to $0 before the tech is completed, correct?

Another point about binary research: the beaker cost of a technology is reduced based on how many civilizations already know a technology. So if you put the slider on 50% and it takes 10 turns to reach a technology that some of your neghbors reach in 5 turns, then during those first 5 turns you were paying the higher beaker price. If you instead held at 0% for 5 turns followed by 100% for 5 turns, you'd still have the technology after 10 turns, but you will only have been researching it when it was cheaper... thus saving lots more beakers than the rounding errors. Over the course of long game that equals a few "free" techs compared to letting the slider sit somewhere other than 100% or 0%.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Does anyone know what the chance of a resource spawning on a mine is? Also does the mine have to be worked by a city? From experience I'd say yes. I just had a gems resource spawn on the very first mine I made on the very first turn it was worked.

 

[kcd_swede]

Does anyone know what the likelihood of a resource spawning on a mine is? Also does the mine have to be worked by a city? From experience I'd say yes. I just had a gems resource spawn on the very first mine I made on the very first turn it was worked. :shock:

Yes, the mine has to be worked to have any chance of popping a resource. I have no idea what the percent chance is, but I'd guess its less than 1% per turn worked.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Yes, the mine has to be worked to have any chance of popping a resource. I have no idea what the percent chance is, but I'd guess its less than 1% per turn worked.

I'd say way less. I'd say on average I have one resource spawn per game. Pulling these numbers out of my ass but in a typical game that lasts ~400 turns where I have say 50 mines which I work for say a third of the game. So roughly 15 mines worked per turn so 400*15 = 6000 *mine worked turns*. 1/6000 or 0.02%. Or so says my extremely crude maths. I'd be fascinated to know what it actually is now!

 

[God-Emperor]

The "mine creating a resource" odds are 1 in 10,000 for each type of resource you currently have the tech to use.

This is controlled in the CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml file in the data for the mine improvement. They are listed separately but they all have the same odds specified (but some other values are different, of course).

 

[Handel]

The "mine creating a resource" odds are 1 in 10,000 for each type of resource you currently have the tech to use.

Also you might pop a "not mine needed" resource w/o working the tile at all and without the needed tech to use. I have a whale showing up outside the the BFC. Also once a ancient scout found a oil although it probably was a random event.

 

[UnforcedError]

Hi,

This is my first post. I've been playing civ 4 for a few years now, but after becoming comfortable on monarch I could not seem to move on, so I finally googled up this fantastic forum and some of TMIT's and AbsoluteZero's great videos. So first of all, thank you all for sharing all these ideas and techniques which greatly helped me moving up to immortal and with some of my favourite leaders even to deity. My very first question is rather about the particular customs for this forum. Is there a special thread new members are expected to post their profiles / introductions in (I didn't see a sticky) or is it OK if I just chime in on various threads?