a4phantom said:
RJ: In the options there is a setting called 'wait at the end of turn'. Without this option checked, you will move to the next turn just after moving all your units. This means that you can't check your cities after moving all your units. Not my preference, but to each his own, I guess.
There's also the danger of the turn ending before you react to barbarians or other marauders by waking and moving sleeping units.
Two questions:
1. I appreciate the feedback on the "when do I build my first worker" question, and would appreciate it if more of the experts would weigh in on it.
I thought that the answer given by lost_civantares was quite good, maybe a bit short because not a lot of explanation was given. So I'll elaborate a bit on what he/she said.
In civilization (and actually any other builder/conquerer game), the main goal is to grow strong. You want big productive cities and a technologically advanced empire with huge armies. The question is how to get there as fast as possible. How to increase your strength as fast as possible.
This sounds very trivial, but people seldom actually compare two different paths that lead to growth of your civilization. They don't sit down and think about it. It's not always easy to do however I think it is quite possible in this case.
First the qualitative statement that a city that has grown a few times is not much better than a starting city if those tiles aren't improved in any way (especially since the capital gets + 8 commerce from the palace). Improved tiles are much better than unimproved tiles. That's why you want to have a worker as fast as possible (as long as there is something to do for it).
You have a size one city that can build a worker or grow to size 2. What is the better way to increase the rate at which your strength grows?
If the worker can't build anything when it will be finished then it is useless to build it now. However, at the same moment you can research a technology that allows you to improve the land or chop forests for production.
Lets assume that we research a technology that enables some worker improvements because otherwise the answer to the question it trivial.
I'll use typical numbers: A city of size 1 unimproved by workers produces 2 hammers and 2 extra food. If the city grows to size 2 and still doesn't have any improved tile it will gain a 2 food, 1 hammer tile extra. The 2 food will be consumed meaning that the city produces 3 hammers and 2 extra food.
Case 1: Build worker first:
-The worker will be finished at turn 15.
-If the worker can't improve the food harvest of the city, then the city will grow at turn 26.
Case 2: Grow to size 2 and then build worker:
-The city will grow to size 2 in 11 turns.
-The worker will be finished at turn 23.
In case 1, we will have a worker 8 turns before case 2. These 8 turns can be used to build almost 2 tile improvements. For instance, we could chop 2 forests for 40 hammers or build a farm on a food bonus tile for + 2 food. The extra food would make the city in case 1 grow 8 turns (some calculation behind that but it's not always the same, game dependent) after it has build the worker or at turn 23.
With the right starting techs, you could even build mines and farms at the moment the worker has finished in case 1. In that case, when the city grows to size 2, you could have a city using an improved food tile plus an improved hammer tile. This could easily result in a size 2 city producing +2 food and 6 hammers or +3 food and 5 hammers instead of an unimproved city producing +2 food and 3 hammers (assuming a farmed tile of 4 food and a mined plains or grassland hill).
If you choose to go forest chopping then the 40 hammers head start could give you all sorts of nice things. A nice head start on another worker or settler for instance, maybe a barracks when you fancy that approach.
Of course the worker build in case 2 can do the same improvements, but it will always be 2 improvements behind. The advantages of having the improvements earlier and being in front with these improvements will pay off big time. Like your money on the bank in real life, it's better to have it earlier so that it will start earning interest earlier. The interest from the tile improvements is the speedup in building all kinds of things that speed up the growth of your empire.
All of this of course depends on the availability of the necessary terrain improvement technologies.
There are of course some advantages of case 2. The first 11 turns while growing it can build something that the city in case 1 can only build after it has finished the worker while the city in case 2 is building the worker. The only thing that could be finished in those 11 turns is a warrior or scout. That could help you in exploring the terrain a little. I personally use my first warrior/scout for that and later build one to guard my city or more when more scouting/barbarian containment is needed. Theoretically, it is possible that the extra early scouting unit could help you find a bonus hut that gives you something nice. However, I play at high levels so these bonuses are not that valuable (you get less good things from huts at high levels) and I also don't like to gamble too much. I like to play in a secure way to victory.
a4phantom said:
2. What do people use horse archers, knights and cavalry for? Since they lack city raider and have very hard counters (spears, pikes and rifles), as well as no defensive terrain bonus, even though they have high base strengths and mobility they don't seem that useful in combat. Strong against cats and cannons, but Roland Johanson tells us that collateral damage done to your stack is independent of how well your defending unit beats the attacking seige. It seems to me that their true purpose is to pillage, since they can pillage a (flat) square on the turn they move into it. When I send mounties to pillage, I send a defensive infantry unit or two along with to cover them. So why is a knight or a horse archer better than a chariot? Maybe protecting a stack of melee from axes and crossbows?
jayron32 gave some excellent answers to this. I fully agree.
I especially like their use as defenders against pillagers.
In a war I typically retreat in my cities and have an army or maybe two going for the enemy cities. The enemy also comes with stacks for my cities and I meet them at the gates of these cities with artillery type units to weaken them and units that counter their stacks (which could be cavalry type units).
However, often the AI also moves lonely pillagers or tiny groups of pillagers in my territory. Often a cavalry type unit has the best chance of victory against these. Also, if you kill the enemy, then you can retreat your cavalry type unit to a city to heal. Your slow infantry units often have to stay one turn out of your city and are vulnerable to counter attacks often resulting in the loss of your precious unit.
I get some very experienced cavalry units by using them as counter pillagers.
Sometimes a stack has no anti cavalry units or only one anti cavalry unit. In that case an attack by cavalry can be the most efficient attack method.
A cavalry type unit in a stack can be the best defender against some types of units.
I seldom pillage enemy lands as they are soon to be my lands.
So I don't use them for that. However, they could be used for pillaging.
One disadvantage of pillaging is that you tend to lose units when you go in small groups and I just don't think it is worth it to lose the unit against the AI's loss of improvements.
Cavalry type units should seldom be used against cities. Outside of cities they are often the best unit:
The best counter for the axeman and catapult is the horse archer.
The best counter for the catapult, crossbowman and the longbowman is the knight.
The knight is a good counter for the maceman (The crossbowman is more cost-effective).
The best counter for the grenadier and the cannon is the cavalry.
The best counter for tanks is the gunship.
The chariot is a strange unit. It is so early, that it might be your first decent unit. It allows for quick assaults early in the game before the rock-paper-scissors system is fully working (no spearman build yet).
You might value your cavalry in a pitched battle against a strong AI. If you're moving from city to city conquering, then they're quite useless.
IIRC it was build farm on "brown" and mine on "green" back in CivIII days. Is it still the same today? What about other tiles? In general build food on food starved stuff and mines where you need hammers right?
Will bother you with religion and civics later on 
