Settlers and Workers

[TauIronTiger]

I noticed my favorite tactic of massing pretty much nothing but settlers has died with the workers and settler combination. I never played Civ 3, so I don't know if it died in that game. But I am sure there is still a strategy of out populating and outbuilding your opponents? Just not as easy to do when you have to build workers to improve land and settlers to expand?

 

[Corbeau]

Actually, the worker/settler split occurred in Alpha Centauri. Out-expanding your opponents is still possible though. After all, they're under the same constraints. Just build another settler whenever you have the cash flow to support another city, and combine infrastructure with military when you're running in the red.

Note when I say it's possible, I don't say that it's easy. The trick is finding the balance between the two without getting overrun by an aggressive neighbor.

 

[Amourek]

Also barbarians and maintenance costs to consider.

 

[Glinka]

The devs definitely want to slow city expansion, as they showed with barbarian cities and the increased maintanence costs in 1.52. But you can work around this with the right techs and civics, still keeping a 70-80% research budget going. You cannot insta-build a huge empire of seedling cities, however. You're right, those days (remembered fondly from Civ 1 and 2) are gone.

 

[DangerousMonkey]

Yeah, outbuilding your opponent is tricky, because if you expand too fast you'll leave big empire that's weak and poor, and easy pickings for everyone else. If you go too slowly and defensively you'll be left behind. These are a few expansion tips that I find to be quite helpful...

-Chop rush every settler/worker: If at all possible you should make sure to chop one forest for every worker and two for every settler. You can't afford to loose those long turns of lost growth. If you don't have enough forests around a given city to do this you should build your workers/settlers elsewhere. If you don't have enough forests elsewhere you've probably positioned your cites poorly.

-Go heavy on the workers: You should have about 2-4 workers immidiately availible to improve the tiles around each new city as you build them. Don't found new cities until you've improved about 5-7 tiles around cities you already own, unless you need some vital resource right away or something. If you dont' have this many workers to spare you should be building workers, not settlers.

-Use your military: This can mean a lot of things. The most obvious application is capturing/burning enemy cities, but this isn't always possible. You can also pillage the countryside for gold to keep your economy going while you run a deficit and/or wait for those courthouses. Use sneak attacks to capture workers. You can also position a few archers on key forests/hills in your enemy's empire to bottle him up and scare him into wasting time building archer stacks while you expand.

Basicly you intend to beat a skilled opponent or high level AI you have to use every option available. This could mean defensive expansion, all out chop-rush warfare or whatever happens to be most viable. If you're "too cool" to take advantage of the best strategy for a given situation because it's "not your play style" or something you won't get very far.

 

[LawLessOne]

Civ4 is more about quality than quantity. You will need a far number of cities to win but you need some very good cities right at the start to support your empire. A poorly placed city draggs down you empire and hurts your expansion.

Scout out the terrain. Look for really great sites for your next city. Dont worry about packing your citys close to get more in your area. Go for quality locations and your early empire will thrive. Latter on you can fill in any inconvient gaps with poorer cities.

Capture barbarian cities. It is a good way to expand without spending the resources to build settlers. Watch out for the AI players. They are very good at waiting for you to weaken a barbarian citys defenses and then swooping in to capture it.

 

[TauIronTiger]

Awesome. But the inherent proble a found was striking a balance between settlers and workers. In the old game there was no reason not to build a settler. They could improve tiles, build defenses, railroads, and then when you found there was nothing to improve you could start putting cities all over the map. Settlers were a wonder unit. Now I'm left wondering which is better to build, a settler or a worker. Do I want a billion unimproved cities, or a handful of improved cities, and improved tiles with no cities. And then there is culture and religion to decimate the far flung city with nothing in it. Fun stuff.