Reduce Turns to Make Things

[Gumbolt]

@ enyaver.

Not a sensible decision really. In some cases it can be good to grab the best land if an AI is likely to take it. However in this case the best land was north of his capital 4-5 tiles away and the Ai took it. Always try to grab the best sites first. The north spot had 2 strong food tiles and a hidden iron resource.

As for warfare. Smallbrian may be at war but where is his army??? He has no army. You don't delcare war on a AI with zero units. To take down a city with 2-3 longbow would require 3-4+ mace, 3-4 trebs and maybe a few knights. At 1500ad my usual stack on immortal would have 40-60+ units. On my last game I had a stack of 60 units by 1400ad or so. With 20+ cities.

If Smallbrian had used whipping he could of stripped 2 pop away from a city with 5-6 hammers invested in a build and the unit would appear next turn. Sure 1 unhappiness for 10 turns but this is easily managed. Whip all 5 cities and he could have 5 mace in 1 turn. If he had 8-9 cities by 1ad he could soon build up a large army. At present it will take him 6-7 turns to build a single unit. This is where he is missing out big time in the fun part of the game.

@ Smallbrain - Fair enough if you want to continue map.

Cottages. It takes many turns for a cottage to develop into a town. Initially they will offer 1-2 commerce a turn. As they grow they become worth 4-6 commerce a turn. That commerce is then converted into gold or science pending on how you run your science slider. The key thing here is the population in the city must be working the cottage for it to grow. So a city at size 4 could work 4 cottage. Or 3 cottages and a food resource to help growth. Early on food and growth is most important.

Fair enough you grabbed the barb city. It was a poor city to grab really. Did it have any food resources?? The city to the east is more interesting as the jungle covers a lot of grassland. Would need a lot of workers to make it worth it.

Yes might as well make peace with Sal. Albeit he has no units to attack you with.

The distance penalty on this level is low. On immortal it punishes you for distant cities.

If you start a new game I will help you further but I am losing interest in this game as the land is so prohibitive. Even if you caputure cities you will struggle to whip a huge army here with food poor cities.

 

[SmallBrain]

Gumbolt, thank you for another useful post. No need to help me with this game specifically, that was not the purpose of this thread ! Your advice has been read with gratitude and I it was very good of you (and the others) to share it with me, but I understand it is becoming not constructive for you to keep on providing it

I do remember that cottages' output of commerce grows slowly and logarithmically with number of turns, yes.

I didn't realise that Saladin had no units to attack with; I thought he had a lot more units than I did. I assume they are committed to defending (although I'm not likely to start a large scale offensive ) In fact although at war with Saladin I have tried to avoid combat where possible - I cannot stand to lose the troops.

I think I have misunderstood the concept of a tile being worked. I thought once you built a cottage it continued to grow when the worker who built it has moved to another tile and was building something else ? Does the worker have remain on that tile for it to grow ? and the other tiles eg farms, mines continued to produce the base o/p of the tile with the bonus of whatever you have built there without a worker being on that tile.

Thanks again, Gumbolt

SmallBrain
8.April.2016

 

[Gumbolt]

Cottages need to be worked in the city screen. You certainly have misunderstood this. If you hover over the cottages it will tell you how many turns till they grow into Hamlet, villages towns etc. If you are working them this should go down by 1 each turn. (Pending civics late game.)

Sal has units but like all Ai 2-3 defenders per city. This is Chieftain level. I would not expect any Ai to build any stack over 3-5 units. Good luck in your future games. Try and do some research and play the game more before asking more questions. A lot of these answer could be found by simply playing the game. Initiative is always good.

 

[Gator Country]

I think I have misunderstood the concept of a tile being worked. I thought once you built a cottage it continued to grow when the worker who built it has moved to another tile and was building something else ? Does the worker have remain on that tile for it to grow ? and the other tiles eg farms, mines continued to produce the base o/p of the tile with the bonus of whatever you have built there without a worker being on that tile.

It's not the workers, but the citizens in your city who have to work the tiles. Farms and mines and such will not increase their yields over time - these only increase by taking taking certain civics and researching certain techs. Cottages, however, have to have a citizen working on them to grow. It takes a total of 70 turns being worked (on Normal speed) for a cottage to grow into a town.

 

[Bibor]

@SmallBrain

Let me try and help you with less specific advice, perhaps it will make things more clear, perhaps not You say you come from the CIV board game. I don't think I ever played it, but if you are used to board game logic, maybe I can help understand Civ 4.

You can see that the map you play on is divided into small squares. You can see this more easily if you turn on the map grid. The whole map is divided into small squares, even the sea or ocean or ice parts of the map.

Very roughly saying, the goal of this game is to put one human onto each square on this map.

Each human community is represented by a City, and each human in this city is represented by a number (population size or number). Every city can put up to 20 humans onto the map, 1 to each square.

Putting 20 population onto a square grid would require a city zone made of 4x5 squares, which would be ugly. So the designers decided to make every city able to cover a 5x5 square zone, with it's corners chipped off and the middle square not count. 5x5 = 25 - 4 corners - 1 centre = 20 squares.

The whole map, every square at least from the human's perspective, generates a certain amount of one of the three following "goods": food, production or commerce. The land itself doesn't care what humans require to live and multiply, humans do. However, the land, not even the most "human-fertile land" can support "one human per square" on its own. So humans have to "improve" or "humanize" the land to suit their needs.

Every human (or point of population, I'll call it pop from now on) requires 2 units of food to survive. Since the centre suqare of every city produced 2 food on its own, a city of 20 pop would reqire exactly 19x2 = 38 food each turn to sustain itself. These 38 food units must come from the city suqare with chipped off corners (called Big Fat Cross or BFC on these forums).

Apart from food, every human population unit requires 1 happiness point and 1 health point. Thus, for a city made of 20 population, that city needs 20 health and 20 happiness points. Health and happiness points come from land resources (say, Corn or Fish) and are doubled by certain city buildings (a granary adds +1 health for Corn). These resources work empire-wide, but only one resource counts. Having 2 Corn doesn't grant +2 health in your cities.

To be able to improve these resources and to be able to make the buildings that multiply their effect, you need production (represented by hammers), which must also come from the 20 squares of each city. One city cannot produce a granary for another city.

To discover technologies that are required to work the land to its full potential, and to be able to build buildings that utilize them, you need research (science). And science comes from the third resource, commerce. Commerce is also local, generated in each city for itself, but is pooled for each city you own. The efforts and the effects of your research are empire-wide.

The only units (moving parts of your empires) you would need to cover the map in human population is available from the very start: settles, workers and warriors. Settlers to create new cities, workers to improve the land, and warriors to defend the first two unit types from animals.


I know that until now I've been saying things so basic that they are almost irrelevant. However, I'm of firm belief that "deeply understanding" the abovementioned facts is relevant. Because everything else in this game, the challenge, comes from the fact that you have competition. That everything I stated above is contested by other players on the same map. And this contest is what it makes it interesting and hard.

The contests:
You want land? he wants land too. Peacefully, the land is contested by Culture points. Aggressively, the land is contested by war, capturing cities of another player.

You want to wage war? You want stronger units than the initial warrior. The opponent wants to defend (or counterattack!) so it wants even better units than your new units.

You want stronger units? These require new technologies and certain resources. You want to research faster than the opponent.

You want faster research? You need more commerce. These mainly come from cottages that your citizens are required to work (instead of working for more food or production.

Then, as your empire grows, people become distanced from your highness, they become corrupt or they simply demand payment, siphoning your commerce into maintenance costs of faraway cities, units, social policies.


Embed these lines of thinking into your gameplay, and hopefully answers to many questions will become apparent. "He has longbows now. The are stength 6. Obviously my 6 strength swordsmen don't cut it anymore. What's the next unit? Macemen. Strenght 8. What technologies do I need to reach Macemen? Oh look at this, War Elephants, also strength 8 and available much sooner. Hmm, do I have ivory?".

 

[SmallBrain]

Thanks for your inputs.

Thanks, Bibor, for explaining the game in relation to board games. I thought I said I played the board game once lol, many years ago.

I still have not experimented with whipping, slavery or other civics.

I have been figuring out "working a tile" (I did not understand until the last day or two that the white circles in the city view correspond to tiles being worked, and you can switch them on/off by left clicking on an individual tile up to number of citizens you have. I have also come to understand what has been said in this thread and the various tutorials about calculating the food v citizens balance, 'working a tile' etc. Having understood the white circles it is all very much more understandable. I realize that there is much I haven't used yet.

Also, I now understand why you should choose a location for your city with lots of resources and water nearby w

Taith minimal desert (can desert tiles be usefully used ?), mountain and hilly tiles.

What determines which tiles in a city's boundaries can be worked ? The furthest ones can't be used (a fact I didn't realize until some time after I had been playing about with the white circles). Even though a city can have an area with developed tiles as large as 81 tile (four tiles in each direction) I can't work more than the 25inside tiles leaving the ring of width tiles unworkable. This must be the reason for creating your cities 3-4 tiles apart usually

My current source of bafflement is controlling what I researching: for example, the program insists on defaulting to researching philosophy when I consider chemistry much more important; but I think I've understood how to change that except in the case of e.g., I want to research assembly line, I have Steam Power but Assembly Line isn't a choice !

That's enough of my current sources of confusion for now; please don't go to any trouble to answer them, as I am certain that I will figure them out over the course of time

SmallBrain
10.April.2016

 

[Bibor]

Thanks for your inputs.
I still have not experimented with whipping, slavery or other civics.

Regarding your question on whipping (requires slavery civic, available by researching Bronze Working).

Here's the treatise by VoiceOfUnreason: Vocum Sineratio: The Whip which will explain pretty much everything.
http://www.civfanatics.com/node/111

basically what it says is that whipping is a conversion of population to production or simply into

So is whipping acceptable? Lets say you have a city with a regular riverside grassland farm that produces 3 per turn. Your city has 1 citizen and and it eats 2 to live. Adding 2 from the city center to the total food produced, we get a 5-2=3 surplus food per turn.

To grow a city from size 1 to 2 takes 33 surplus food, which translates in this case into 11 turns to grow from size 1 to size 2.

Every citizen sacrificed in slavery (i.e. whipping) yields 30 of production. But only if you already invested at least 1 into the production. Otherwise it will yield only 20 . A Monument building costs 30 to build. If you whip it the very first turn you put the Monument into the production queue, it would still require 10 to finish it. But, if you invest only 1 (for 1 turn) into it before whipping, you will finish it the very next turn (as you will have 32 invested, 2 from the two turns of production, 30 from the sacrificed population) with 2 hammers to spare, which will go into your next production, whatever you choose it to be.
You can tell from the city screen if you already invested hammers into building something. Invested hammers are colored blue in the bar. Hammers that will be added next turn are colored translucent blue.

Putting this knowledge into the previous scenario, if it takes 11 turns to grow your city to population 2 and you sacrifice that population to yield 30 , you might've as well put that 1 citizen to work a plains hill mine that yields 4 per turn and get 44 in the 11 turns.

So when do you whip?
Scenario A
You don't have a worker to create that plains hills mine. Maybe you don't have a single hill around your city. Heck, maybe it's a tiny one-square island with no land at all. If you want to build anything, you have no choice but to whip surplus population. This is why slavery makes settling a city on a single-square island with 2 fish resources bearable.

Scenario B
When the food tile you work is better than a grassland riverside farm. Imagine that instead of this basic farm that yields 3 , you have a pasture with pigs that yields 6 . Suddenly the math changes. Instead of taking 11 turns to grow a city to size 2, it takes only 33/6=6 turns to do so. Congratulations, you effectively doubled your food to hammer conversion ratio. Not only can this city whip effectively every 11 turns (when the unhappiness from the previous one goes away), but can also grow beyond size 2 in the process.

Scenario C
When your city is at its limits regarding happiness. An unhappy citizen is not contributing to the city at all. It simply refuses to work, but still eats 2 food! By whipping unhappy citizens away, you get your city down to a lower, more manageable and productive size. Although, I don't think this is a likely scenario on your difficulty level.

Okay, so far this covers only the effectiveness of whipping. Basically, the better food tiles your cities have access to, the more production is supplemented by population sacrifice.

So... what to whip?

Your opponents do everything you do. On higher difficulty levels AIs also cheat! To gain the upper hand against them, you need to become a Time Lord. Your job is to compress time!

Since the passing of time in Civ4 is represented by turns, your job is to compress turns.

There are two different ways things work in this game:

The earlier the better
Most things simply benefit you the sooner you build them. A library built 50 turns earlier than by regular means, will yield 100 more , 2 for each turn. A bank that increases your gold output in that city by 20, built 30 turns earlier than by regular means, will net you 600 you'd never get! By the power of the whip, you compress time by making things appear sooner than they would normally do. This also makes you able to "balance" cities that would otherwise be difficult to build up, say a city surrounded by nothing but floodplains and desert. Great food yields but no hammer production.

Opportunity windows
Remember the scenario from my previous post abot you having Swordsmen and the enemy having Longbows? The natural counter to your Swordsmen is Longbows. However, swordsmen are available much earlier (turn-wise) than Longbows.
The period between:
I have swordsmen - he has archersand
I have swordsmen - he has longbows
is called an opportunity window. The higher difficulty level you play on, the narrower these opportunity windows become.

Lets say that from the moment you get Swordsmen and estimated time your enemy gets longbows is 30 turns.
In these 30 turns you have to produce and move enough swordsmen to capture the enemy cities you want, before making peace.

If you have 5 cities and it takes 6 turns for each city to produce a single swordsman, and if it takes 10 turns for these swordsmen to reach the first enemy city, you'd have 10 swordsmen at their gates by turn 22. That leaves only 8 turns to capture that city and perhaps one more city (if you have enough fully healed troops left).
- You compress time by making these units in cities closer to the enemy
- You compress time by making roads between your cities (and toward enemy borders!)
- and finally you compress time by whipping in swordsmen, producing double or even triple amount of them in the presented window of opporunity.
Not only can your offensive start earlier by having more swordsmen available sooner, but by capturing enemy cities, you are also crippling your opponent's research - widening your window of opportunity!
It's not unusual for an enemy to be 5 turns from researching rifling (a dreaded scenario for all the Cavalry rushers, as Riflemen are a natural counter-unit to Cavalry), but as the enemy looses critical research cities, rifling for them gets more and more unreachable (12 turns to research, 18, 24...)

 

[cseanny]

Here's a post about whipping I made in another thread which has some screen shots at the end. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=14214438#post14214438

In a recent Deity game I started whipping (and a few chops) 5 cities at 800 BC and by 500 BC I had 17 Axe, 4 Spear, and 10 Catapults (31 units). 2 of those cities had nothing more than 1 single food resource improved (literaly 1 tile improved) and a granary. Imho the whip is easily the most important and game changing mechanic you can learn - units, hammer overflow, gold overflow, cascade and que whipping, etc etc.