RichPowers
Chieftain
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Excellent document, Sisiutil. Thanks for compiling and distilling the myriad beginners strategies presented on the forums.
Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners
- Thread starter Sisiutil
- Start date
I have a question, I should not capture or build more cities basically when my research is at 60% right, but when I'm at war, raze some civ cities and free land is left available after that, so basically i'm making free land for some other civ to expand there...
How to deal with that?
How to deal with that?
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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You can go straight to 0% if you at least have writing or alphabet to help drag you out.
Negator_UK
King
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Just read the guide again after a year - was good before and is even better now ! Good work and thanks for caring.
A micro-comment and a suggestion.
1. Your entry about sentried spies does not make it clear that only one spy is needed for the defence action and that multiple spies are a waste - should make that clear in a beginners guide.
2. You don't mention dot-mapping, which I found to be a real eye opener in city planning - such a section would be graphic heavy of course and maybe bust the format of the guide.
A micro-comment and a suggestion.
1. Your entry about sentried spies does not make it clear that only one spy is needed for the defence action and that multiple spies are a waste - should make that clear in a beginners guide.
2. You don't mention dot-mapping, which I found to be a real eye opener in city planning - such a section would be graphic heavy of course and maybe bust the format of the guide.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
True, but I would be very cautious about doing so if you're a beginner, which is the type of player this guide and thread are intended for.
Back to the OP, in an early war when your economy is still new, it's not unusual to raze cities that have little to offer. And yes, the AI will almost inevitably rush in to fill any free gaps. You basically have 3 options:
- You can suck it up and keep the city instead of razing it. I assume the city has little to recommend it (no shrine, no wonders) if you were considering razing it. However, if it's in a strategic location, and/or if it claims a resource you don't have (or even an extra one that you do have that you could use for trading), then it may be worth the (temporary) cost of keeping it.
- If you prefer to raze the city, if you can spare the units, you could leave a couple behind to attack any city defender/settler combos that wander in there. This may require a declaration of war, however, and that could have far-reaching consequences for your diplomacy.
- Or--and this is what I usually do--you can let the AI settle there and capture the city from them later, when you can afford it.
The main thing is, 60% is not a hard and fast rule, it's a guideline. You can allow your research to dip below it, even well below it; just make sure you have a plan on how you're going to recover and push the research rate back up again. For example, you might doubt your ability to afford the city you're about to capture; but if the next city after that is a holy city with a shrine and a well-spread religion, that should more than make up for the city before it.
troytheface
Deity
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a good guide.
when resettling razed city land , settle next to the ruins and get a science bumb (usually).
when resettling razed city land , settle next to the ruins and get a science bumb (usually).
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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I guess it's a matter of preference in terms of speed of beginners becoming *not* beginners. I didn't want the training wheels on very long. If a player is unwilling to drop below 50% or 60% on the slider in the early game he will deny himself important early production and city sites on occasion. On difficulties like emperor+, such a rule of thumb can cause you to lose by itself, as I'm sure you're aware.
The important thing about the slider is its relationship to commerce. 50% is utterly useless if your aggregate GNP is low and you don't get super multipliers buildings in for the commerce you do generate.
The reason I challenge the "X slider % rule" is because of how quickly I myself abandoned it about a year ago, somewhere in the noble-monarch range I was already finding it useless, but was getting away from it even before.
I really had a breakthrough when I pounded away at trying to hit emperor the first time ---->that's when I started understanding how 10+ cities in the BCs was attainable without strike, and how to keep up in tech while doing so. THAT kind of expansion is a little much for beginners, but rather than keeping their eye on the slider (which IMO is a bit dated), you might suggest either "tech this by x date" or "try to have this beaker rate, using scientists/commerce/whatever).
IMO by far the best look is the simple statement "keep up enough that you are researching something you can trade", with priority on what keeps
high as needed. It might be a guide for beginners, but its purpose is also to help them IMPROVE. A delicate balance, I know, but IMO the 60% rule can hamstring people, it slowed me down a bit and I see people confusing how commerce works even today in general discussions.
GyroLeader
Warlord
Yeah, great guide, all new players should read this. 
Thanks For the guide - Keep coming back to it over and over and step from there on to the specific threads within the forum - Is really does state what the manual doesn't.
Anyway - Took the liberty to pass the link on the welcome page as well
Anyway - Took the liberty to pass the link on the welcome page as well
Great guide as always, a few notes: some may not be applicable as being too specific, or too advanced and not worth adding more text to the guide which is probably long enough already to put some off I would guess.
1 (In BtS, you can change civics without experiencing anarchy during a golden age.)
Or with Cristo Redentor, great for late game warring for non-spirituals.
1.1 Workers should prioritize tiles with resources first, as these provide the highest yields and, often, additional benefits as well (such as increased happiness or health).
And within this generally bonus food resources should be before hammer/commerce resources in most cases, if you have more than one to chose between.
1.1 After resources, focus on improving tiles that a city’s citizens are working but that are unimproved.
I don't really agree here - you need to improve the next best tile, sometimes that will be what is already being worked (flood plains), but not always - for example after a first food resource being farmed/pastured, often the next best thing to do is a mine on a hill (next to a river preferably), as mining is +2H, but only rarely will that square be being worked.
1.1 Do not set workers to auto-improve: they tend to build too may farms and not enough cottages, among other things.
One option here to reduce micromanagement with less loss of efficiency is to use the Automate Trade Network option on 20-33% of your workers (especially for railroading), and manage the rest yourself for improvements. Note also in general the faster the gamespeed you play, the more automating workers tends to hurt you (IME).
2.1 Many players prefer to build a Warrior (or Scout, if you start with Hunting) first, timing the build by changing the tile worked by the capital’s first citizen so that the unit is finished on the same turn that the city grows to size 2.
One thing to consider is if your first city is on plains hills, then going to size 2 takes you from 2 to 3 production (maybe with +1 commerce) at best, before you get a worker out to develop tiles. With most starts you only have 1 hammer (if you are growing normally), so a second population usually doubles your hammer output, but a good start on a plains hill means you are already double, so +1H is only adding 50% to your normal (2F to growth) production capacity, instead of 100%. So worker first seems stronger in that case - although the worker build itself is only 33%(?) faster at 1 pop (25% at 2 pop I think) as your 2 surplus food comes in for worker/settler builds.
2.1 Settler: Building a Settler first allows you to have a second city in place very early in the game.
Maybe it is playing on Marathon, but I can't see Settler first in most cases. A normal start with Settler first, the Settler finishes at 2875BC. Worker/Settler on the same map, the Worker got a Corn irrigated by 3355BC (waiting a couple of turns for the tech in this case), and the Settler popped 2845BC: 2 turns later - would have been the same turn if I started with Agriculture. Plus I already have a worker, who for the test I sat idle for 35 or so turns, who could have been making more improvements (depending what techs started with/earning), chopping, etc. The only time I could see Settler first is if you are beelining non-worker techs from the start (for early religions) and you don't start with techs for workers to do anything in your starting location. Even then I would be thinking warrior first as an option as well - using the same test start, warrior micromanaged to appear at 2 population, then settler, get the settler at 2740BC (9 turns later), but with 1 extra pop in main city, an extra warrior (and thus more scouting/village bonuses hopefully, and a defender for city 2), and possibly the extra commerce from working the second square (from FP in this case, also from some calendar resources, food resource next to river, etc).
2.1 Click on a white-circled tile to remove the citizen from that tile, then click on a different (non-circled) tile to re-assign that citizen.
It probably should be noted here that this turns off automatic control for that city, which means that if you later improve a resource, build a cottage, change civics, and so on, you will have to go in and ensure the correct tiles are being worked (or click on the centre of the city to resume automatic control). Autocontrol also makes adjustments based on the build - especially for switching between settler/worker and everything else the best tiles to work can be quite different. I generally prefer to muck around with the priority system to get the right tiles in use under ACC where possible, especially as you build more and more cities. Not that you can just ignore cities with it on, but they are unlikely to do anything particularly stupid (apart from grow despite the avoid growth setting turned on
).
2.3 Barbarians spawn in the “fog of war”—any darkened tile on the map, even if you’ve previously explored and revealed it.
Technically this is only true of barbarian villages. Actual barbarian units also will only appear at least 3 spaces away from the nearest unit (in a jungle/forest this accounts 18 squares that might might be in fog of war but can't spawn a barb). Well, I read that somewhere anyway, never tested it myself thoroughly. This also means that being on a forest tile is generally better than an unforested hill (for non-archers) for fog busting/defense, but conversely the hill still actually sees the barbarian 1 turn earlier.
2.3 Remember that fighting Barbarians provides your units with experience points towards promotions.
Although only up to 5 (animals) or 10. Not too likely to lower levels at quicker speeds on smaller maps, but it happens quite a lot to me on Marathon and Huge maps. That gives an interesting tactical decision - attack with the best unit that won't get XP (and still might die in some cases), or risk a weaker unit attacking but at least getting a couple of XP.
2.4 Each city has a maintenance cost that detracts from the commerce it can contribute back to your civilization.
No, I know you will know how this works, but I don't think this is an accurate description - the city maintenance cost is in gold.
2.4 Maintenance costs grow with the population of the city.
Maintenance costs in every city also increase as you get more cities. Civic costs also increase as your cities population goes up, but these aren't shown on a cities screen as part of the maintenance cost, and aren't affected by the courthouse bonus because of this.
As I was confused by this (and got it wrong before the edit), doing a quick test to be sure I understand it, I did a test start and mucked about in WB to find out how number cities and their population affected things. Each population adds another 12.5% to the base (1 population) distance cost (so it has doubled at 9 pop, three times as much at 17, etc.) This gives us a good reason to mostly build in close, and to set up FP/Versailles/move the palace to good locations well spread apart.
Adding new cities increases the number of cities cost in all cities (of course), so this part multiplies up rapidly in the early game. If 1 city costs x at 1 population, two will cost 4x, 3 cost 9x, 4 costs 16x and so, following the square numbers upward, the same value is applied to all cities initially. This number is then multiplied in each city by a factor, more or less an extra 5% per population (+100% at population 20 for example). This value is finally capped based on difficulty level (5 for noble, 6 for prince, etc.)
What this implies is that extra population is quite cheap in maintenance cost (except in places very far from the capital), and that it is the number of cities costs that is the really stumbling block mostly - extra population in those cities tends to pay for itself quite well. Putting a new city down gives you relatively little new income immediately in most cases, but jumps the costs of all your cities (particularly the high population ones). Once the high population inner cities start hitting the cap expansion becomes less prohibitive, and when even new cities are capped at 1 population you can really start expanding like crazy without too much worry (apart from distance costs which will build up as the population expands).
2.4.1 THE 60% RULE
As others have noted I am fairly dubious about this, but can't really come up with a better thing to suggest in something aimed at the basics as the area is complicated and pretty much the entire key to the game (especially for ex-Civ I/II/III players, who will probably have a good handle on most of the rest of the game anyway). Maybe add a line that highlights this is a guideline and sometimes settling a chokepoint, key resource, or high growth/commerce site will be worth pushing it down further in the short term (although watching out for sites too far from your capital of course).
2.4.2 Build the Forbidden Palace national wonder and Versailles world wonder, which act as second capitals. Ensure that you build them a good distance from your capital to increase their effectiveness.
I almost always build Versailles right next my palace, in some high production spot that can get it done quickly before any AIs might get there. I later rebuild my Palace out in the boonies somewhere at my leisure - Versailles still covers that area for maintenance, and the Palace is a relatively cheap build for a newly settled/conquered area.
4.1 Commerce is different, in that it is not directly used within the city, but contributed back to your civilization as a whole.
This one again - commerce is used within the city, and converted to money, beakers, EP or culture based on your civilisation wide rate, but using the locally applicable bonuses from buildings. Any money, beakers and EP generated are then delivered to the general pool for your civilisation. Any culture generated applies locally to the city itself.
4.1 As in real life, resources in Civilization IV are prized commodities. You will want to found cities near several resources.
It is slightly off topic for the section, but you might want to note that you don't have to work, or even have a city in range, to gain the strategic and/or civ-wide health/happy benefits of a resource, this is only necessary for the city production bonuses.
4.2 CITY PLACEMENT
You don't discuss overlapping cities at all, which is something I almost always do at some level - outer cities can work cottages up for core cities, production from resources can be flipped to the city that most needs them (meaning that a shared wheat/corn can be used to get one city up to the happy/healthy cap, and then switched to help power up another city once it has built granary). Until very late on it is rare to get a city up to 20, and even then you have specialists to add in, so you can easily get 25+ in cities that share a tiles.
Even later in the game when you could max out a cities population, any disadvantage is offset as you get Sid's Sushi and one of the production corps and can put it in more cities, meaning lower per city corp cost, but you get the same benefit of more food/culture/hammers more times - founding them on Wall Street of course, but really even without founding them the benefits outweigh the costs - in one of my late era (well 1830) games (conquest only) with maniac corping a size 22 city costs 100g for its 2 corps (SS/MI), halves to 50g and gets 29H base, +100% = 58H, which build 58g wealth (or build stuff, usually worth much more). Then add in +32F and 125 culture from SS, for 16 extra population to specialize with.
4.2 Tiles beside rivers produce +1 commerce, making them attractive for cottages.
Although you would still get the same +1 commerce with anything else on them as well (except leaving forests there before you get lumber mill). I guess you can say there is an advantage in specialising squares - for example often having a OF 4H and a 4F 0H is better than two both having 2F 2H because the former is more flexible (especially when mixed with the other squares you have).
4.3.1 Buildings that improve a city’s health: Granary, Aqueduct, Harbor, Grocer, Hospital, Recycling Centre.
+Supermarket, Public Transport. Recycling Centre of course doesn't directly improve health, but probably don't need to go into that level of detail here.
4.4 Commerce is contributed to your civilization as a whole to be converted into one of three things: Wealth, Research, or Culture.
Again, it is converted into Wealth, Research, Culture or EP in the city, then some of those go into the general pool (all except culture).
4.4 Wealth is extremely useful; it can be used to upgrade military units from obsolete to up-to-date types while keeping their promotions intact; it can be used to purchase things from other civilizations, such as resources, technology, or even military alliances and actions;
Worth mentioning the 10XP cap when upgrading? And that trading cash requires Currency (either you or the AI I think).
4.4 You can connect to other cities either by road (enabled by The Wheel) or water (river or coast, enabled by Sailing; or ocean, enabled by Astronomy).
Sometimes important to know that even without sailing you can trade on rivers inside or running alongside the edge of your cultural borders - if you are landlocked but on a big river system this can save you a couple of techs that are otherwise pretty useless to you.
4.4 Open Borders agreements (enabled by Writing) are also required to enable trade routes.
Foreign trade routes, anyway.
4.4.1 Build the Temple of Artemis world wonder—preferably in a coastal city—which increases trade route income in that city.
Not sure I would recommend this wonder to improve commerce in the early game - before currency you have 1 trade route, worth about 1 commerce, so +100% is +1 commerce from this wonder (it gets better later admittedly, but gets killed off before it actually becomes seriously good). Unless you get GLH as well, then it is worth 2. The 5 GPP it creates is the main reason to get it as far as the early game is concerned. Maybe if it was moved to the mid game section where the commerce part becomes bigger, but then the AI tends to pick this one up quite fast.
4.5 You have to be careful, though. If you remove a citizen from a tile with a town, for example, to make him into a scientist, you may find that the amount of research points produced by the city goes down, not up.
Of course you have to keep in mind at the same time slider changes you may be making in the near future - if you currently have 0% science (building cash to buy upgrades maybe) and did the same thing, your city science output would go up, but then drop down again a few turns later when you change the slider back to 70% science (or whatever).
4.6.1 High-priority builds: banks, markets, grocers; also libraries, monasteries, universities, observatories, laboratories.
Also Harbor, Customs House, (Castle), Airport - you covered all the things that make your existing commerce multiply better, but once you have all them that means anything that increases the cities base commerce is multiplied up.
4.6.1 Low-priority builds: factory
Not sure I agree - forge/factory/coal power are under 1500H (costs 1260H if built Forge/Fact/Power, if no bonuses like OR or from leader traits). If you build those before all the commerce improvements start you have already saved 1800H building your original list (with just 1 monastery), plus you then save (actually multiply) hammers on all the health/happiness buildings, any units you suddenly need to build, and at the end you also gain extra gold/beakers every turn when you switch to building wealth/science in the city.
Of course on an old city most of the buildings are there by the time factory rolls around, so their isn't as much benefit, but for cities you take over (or rebuild after razing a nearby one) at that stage of the game, the hammer bonuses should come in immediately after granary (and maybe lighthouse on the coast, but usually that can wait). Although some of the early commerce boosts are delayed doing it this way, the end of the building comes in much faster and more than pays for itself overall (unless you are rushing to a specific tech during the early part of the new commerce cities lifespan and miss it by a turn!).
4.6.1.2 High-priority builds: religious shrine, market, grocer, bank, airport; harbor (and customs house in BtS) if coastal
The last two create commerce, not cash, so are just as useful in a coastal science city as a wealth city.
Of course in general both a Science and a Wealth city are also commerce cities, so low priority is always to create the other cities buildings (when the sliders aren't going to be staying at around 0% science or wealth so only internal city science/wealth sources are important, but that won't be true for the majority of most beginners games, although I have had games where the science slider never dropped off 100% due to shrine/wonder/corp abuse, so most cities never bothered with banks for example).
4.6.1.2 Wealth City
Also I try to set up Wall Street in a city where the better corporations to spread can be based - well more precisely if your empire is getting large, then a location that can hold the corporations you want to found and spread to yourself, conversely if you are massively outnumbered then a location where you can found the corps you want to spread around the AI. Having the wrong base for my corps is costing me over 1000 gold/turn in one long winded game I am playing, for example. Well 500, the other 500 was me putting the second corp with the first one when it would have gone on the Wall Street city.
4.6.2 Tile Improvements: mine, workshop, lumbermill, watermill (especially on a plains tile with a river); also, build just enough farms so citizens can work the production tiles and still have the city grow.
I often build 1 or 2 farms extra originally and then workshop/watermill them later as the population caps out (either working every tile, or at the happy/health caps). It makes getting to the cap much faster. If you have a couple of food resources in the area this isn't necessary, but for ex-jungle workshop fests it is often needed.
4.6.3 and/or to build a Military Academy (requires
Education; in BtS, Military Science) which makes military builds 50% faster.
I would rarely bother - if you already have forge/factory/power then all builds are +100%. So a 200H unit takes 100H of base production, adding a further 50% production means they take 80H, so you end with 20% more units (4 compared to 5). +2XP or attaching for me. Also on larger maps I tend not to go for the +XPs much, as I end up producing military from many places, so the XP bonus is diluted compared to smaller maps where only 1 or 2 cities will be available for most unit production.
4.6.4 In BtS, the new National Park national wonder will not only alleviate health problems in this city, it will also give you one free specialist for every forest preserve.
Of course every forest you chop down, irrigate, and use the space below, you are getting +2F (after biology), which pays for one specialist. So the gain is +1H +1 happy per forest preserve, and no net gain of specialists. Well it is more complicated than that, as you get the specialists even if you don't work the tile, so you can run more specialists while the city is developing, or in a city with a massive food deficit (tundra forest with no way of irrigating could run 22 specialists, 20 free, two working the tundra forest preserve for 1 food each, to make a city with population 2, 4F. Plus F corporations also make things more complicated as well (you could be developing quite a while, thus getting the non-working the square bonus, but also you might run out of specialist slots unless you switch to Caste System).
5.1 BtS addendum: The expansion pack has improved forts. They now preserve the underlying terrain (including forests). In addition, forts can be used by ships.
You can also base your air units in them (up to 4 per fort I think). Obviously in most cases a defensive land unit gets parked there while they are based there (and especially if it is coastal).
5.1 Caravels and Submarines do not require open borders agreements to enter other Civs’ territory,
Privateers as well, although anyone can attack your Privateers anywhere even if not at war with you.
5.2 You may want to leave units “unpromoted” until you have a better idea which promotion may be most needed. Promotions do not expire over time. Promotions also help heal damage.
One exception to this - if you have an unused promotion past the 10xp mark and you upgrade a unit without a general attached, the XP gets reduced to 10 and you can no longer get the promotion (conversely it is faster to get back to promotions again - if you had a 17xp unit, upgrade it down to 10xp, then the next promotion is at 17xp. If you got a promotion, upgrade and it drops down to 10xp, next promotion at 26xp. (Numbers change a bit for Charismatic, but same general idea).
Well there is a second way that promotions expire. If you let the unit get killed before you use it
5.4 After taking a city, hurry cultural improvements (theatre, courthouse, library, temples, university) to push the borders back out.
Probably more important is to set the cultural slider up by a couple of notches (once the captured cities start coming out of revolt) - most captured cities have enough population to run several towns or similar commerce producers, plus trade route commerce, etc., so you can easily pump out the first couple of cultural borders within 10 turns or so, and then once the war is over the cultural improvements can be built and take back over as you switch back to research.
Or dump Sid's Sushi (or similar) into the city, which can easily be putting out more culture than all the base culture buildings put together.
5.5 You can decrease war weariness the same way you deal with unhappiness in general
Of course here you are actually increase the amount of happiness you are creating, not decreasing war weariness. Only the Police State, Jail and Mt Rushmore actually reduce war weariness (or taking SoZ off an enemy). Nationhood isn't really anything to do with being at war, so seems to fit under the "same way you deal with unhappiness in general" I would think.
5.6 You can also earn the circumnavigation bonus by obtaining other Civs’ world maps that, combined, reveal tiles in the above manner. Without even building a ship!
This also works in reverse. So never sell/trade maps with an AI while you are going about circumnavigating the world - it is quite feasible to have got around 95% of the world and then trade maps with an AI on his turn who knows the missing 5%, and he gets the bonus.
Phew, that is up to half way through, I will try and cover the second half tomorrow maybe.
1 (In BtS, you can change civics without experiencing anarchy during a golden age.)
Or with Cristo Redentor, great for late game warring for non-spirituals.
1.1 Workers should prioritize tiles with resources first, as these provide the highest yields and, often, additional benefits as well (such as increased happiness or health).
And within this generally bonus food resources should be before hammer/commerce resources in most cases, if you have more than one to chose between.
1.1 After resources, focus on improving tiles that a city’s citizens are working but that are unimproved.
I don't really agree here - you need to improve the next best tile, sometimes that will be what is already being worked (flood plains), but not always - for example after a first food resource being farmed/pastured, often the next best thing to do is a mine on a hill (next to a river preferably), as mining is +2H, but only rarely will that square be being worked.
1.1 Do not set workers to auto-improve: they tend to build too may farms and not enough cottages, among other things.
One option here to reduce micromanagement with less loss of efficiency is to use the Automate Trade Network option on 20-33% of your workers (especially for railroading), and manage the rest yourself for improvements. Note also in general the faster the gamespeed you play, the more automating workers tends to hurt you (IME).
2.1 Many players prefer to build a Warrior (or Scout, if you start with Hunting) first, timing the build by changing the tile worked by the capital’s first citizen so that the unit is finished on the same turn that the city grows to size 2.
One thing to consider is if your first city is on plains hills, then going to size 2 takes you from 2 to 3 production (maybe with +1 commerce) at best, before you get a worker out to develop tiles. With most starts you only have 1 hammer (if you are growing normally), so a second population usually doubles your hammer output, but a good start on a plains hill means you are already double, so +1H is only adding 50% to your normal (2F to growth) production capacity, instead of 100%. So worker first seems stronger in that case - although the worker build itself is only 33%(?) faster at 1 pop (25% at 2 pop I think) as your 2 surplus food comes in for worker/settler builds.
2.1 Settler: Building a Settler first allows you to have a second city in place very early in the game.
Maybe it is playing on Marathon, but I can't see Settler first in most cases. A normal start with Settler first, the Settler finishes at 2875BC. Worker/Settler on the same map, the Worker got a Corn irrigated by 3355BC (waiting a couple of turns for the tech in this case), and the Settler popped 2845BC: 2 turns later - would have been the same turn if I started with Agriculture. Plus I already have a worker, who for the test I sat idle for 35 or so turns, who could have been making more improvements (depending what techs started with/earning), chopping, etc. The only time I could see Settler first is if you are beelining non-worker techs from the start (for early religions) and you don't start with techs for workers to do anything in your starting location. Even then I would be thinking warrior first as an option as well - using the same test start, warrior micromanaged to appear at 2 population, then settler, get the settler at 2740BC (9 turns later), but with 1 extra pop in main city, an extra warrior (and thus more scouting/village bonuses hopefully, and a defender for city 2), and possibly the extra commerce from working the second square (from FP in this case, also from some calendar resources, food resource next to river, etc).
2.1 Click on a white-circled tile to remove the citizen from that tile, then click on a different (non-circled) tile to re-assign that citizen.
It probably should be noted here that this turns off automatic control for that city, which means that if you later improve a resource, build a cottage, change civics, and so on, you will have to go in and ensure the correct tiles are being worked (or click on the centre of the city to resume automatic control). Autocontrol also makes adjustments based on the build - especially for switching between settler/worker and everything else the best tiles to work can be quite different. I generally prefer to muck around with the priority system to get the right tiles in use under ACC where possible, especially as you build more and more cities. Not that you can just ignore cities with it on, but they are unlikely to do anything particularly stupid (apart from grow despite the avoid growth setting turned on
).2.3 Barbarians spawn in the “fog of war”—any darkened tile on the map, even if you’ve previously explored and revealed it.
Technically this is only true of barbarian villages. Actual barbarian units also will only appear at least 3 spaces away from the nearest unit (in a jungle/forest this accounts 18 squares that might might be in fog of war but can't spawn a barb). Well, I read that somewhere anyway, never tested it myself thoroughly. This also means that being on a forest tile is generally better than an unforested hill (for non-archers) for fog busting/defense, but conversely the hill still actually sees the barbarian 1 turn earlier.
2.3 Remember that fighting Barbarians provides your units with experience points towards promotions.
Although only up to 5 (animals) or 10. Not too likely to lower levels at quicker speeds on smaller maps, but it happens quite a lot to me on Marathon and Huge maps. That gives an interesting tactical decision - attack with the best unit that won't get XP (and still might die in some cases), or risk a weaker unit attacking but at least getting a couple of XP.
2.4 Each city has a maintenance cost that detracts from the commerce it can contribute back to your civilization.
No, I know you will know how this works, but I don't think this is an accurate description - the city maintenance cost is in gold.
2.4 Maintenance costs grow with the population of the city.
Maintenance costs in every city also increase as you get more cities. Civic costs also increase as your cities population goes up, but these aren't shown on a cities screen as part of the maintenance cost, and aren't affected by the courthouse bonus because of this.
As I was confused by this (and got it wrong before the edit), doing a quick test to be sure I understand it, I did a test start and mucked about in WB to find out how number cities and their population affected things. Each population adds another 12.5% to the base (1 population) distance cost (so it has doubled at 9 pop, three times as much at 17, etc.) This gives us a good reason to mostly build in close, and to set up FP/Versailles/move the palace to good locations well spread apart.
Adding new cities increases the number of cities cost in all cities (of course), so this part multiplies up rapidly in the early game. If 1 city costs x at 1 population, two will cost 4x, 3 cost 9x, 4 costs 16x and so, following the square numbers upward, the same value is applied to all cities initially. This number is then multiplied in each city by a factor, more or less an extra 5% per population (+100% at population 20 for example). This value is finally capped based on difficulty level (5 for noble, 6 for prince, etc.)
What this implies is that extra population is quite cheap in maintenance cost (except in places very far from the capital), and that it is the number of cities costs that is the really stumbling block mostly - extra population in those cities tends to pay for itself quite well. Putting a new city down gives you relatively little new income immediately in most cases, but jumps the costs of all your cities (particularly the high population ones). Once the high population inner cities start hitting the cap expansion becomes less prohibitive, and when even new cities are capped at 1 population you can really start expanding like crazy without too much worry (apart from distance costs which will build up as the population expands).
2.4.1 THE 60% RULE
As others have noted I am fairly dubious about this, but can't really come up with a better thing to suggest in something aimed at the basics as the area is complicated and pretty much the entire key to the game (especially for ex-Civ I/II/III players, who will probably have a good handle on most of the rest of the game anyway). Maybe add a line that highlights this is a guideline and sometimes settling a chokepoint, key resource, or high growth/commerce site will be worth pushing it down further in the short term (although watching out for sites too far from your capital of course).
2.4.2 Build the Forbidden Palace national wonder and Versailles world wonder, which act as second capitals. Ensure that you build them a good distance from your capital to increase their effectiveness.
I almost always build Versailles right next my palace, in some high production spot that can get it done quickly before any AIs might get there. I later rebuild my Palace out in the boonies somewhere at my leisure - Versailles still covers that area for maintenance, and the Palace is a relatively cheap build for a newly settled/conquered area.
4.1 Commerce is different, in that it is not directly used within the city, but contributed back to your civilization as a whole.
This one again - commerce is used within the city, and converted to money, beakers, EP or culture based on your civilisation wide rate, but using the locally applicable bonuses from buildings. Any money, beakers and EP generated are then delivered to the general pool for your civilisation. Any culture generated applies locally to the city itself.
4.1 As in real life, resources in Civilization IV are prized commodities. You will want to found cities near several resources.
It is slightly off topic for the section, but you might want to note that you don't have to work, or even have a city in range, to gain the strategic and/or civ-wide health/happy benefits of a resource, this is only necessary for the city production bonuses.
4.2 CITY PLACEMENT
You don't discuss overlapping cities at all, which is something I almost always do at some level - outer cities can work cottages up for core cities, production from resources can be flipped to the city that most needs them (meaning that a shared wheat/corn can be used to get one city up to the happy/healthy cap, and then switched to help power up another city once it has built granary). Until very late on it is rare to get a city up to 20, and even then you have specialists to add in, so you can easily get 25+ in cities that share a tiles.
Even later in the game when you could max out a cities population, any disadvantage is offset as you get Sid's Sushi and one of the production corps and can put it in more cities, meaning lower per city corp cost, but you get the same benefit of more food/culture/hammers more times - founding them on Wall Street of course, but really even without founding them the benefits outweigh the costs - in one of my late era (well 1830) games (conquest only) with maniac corping a size 22 city costs 100g for its 2 corps (SS/MI), halves to 50g and gets 29H base, +100% = 58H, which build 58g wealth (or build stuff, usually worth much more). Then add in +32F and 125 culture from SS, for 16 extra population to specialize with.
4.2 Tiles beside rivers produce +1 commerce, making them attractive for cottages.
Although you would still get the same +1 commerce with anything else on them as well (except leaving forests there before you get lumber mill). I guess you can say there is an advantage in specialising squares - for example often having a OF 4H and a 4F 0H is better than two both having 2F 2H because the former is more flexible (especially when mixed with the other squares you have).
4.3.1 Buildings that improve a city’s health: Granary, Aqueduct, Harbor, Grocer, Hospital, Recycling Centre.
+Supermarket, Public Transport. Recycling Centre of course doesn't directly improve health, but probably don't need to go into that level of detail here.
4.4 Commerce is contributed to your civilization as a whole to be converted into one of three things: Wealth, Research, or Culture.
Again, it is converted into Wealth, Research, Culture or EP in the city, then some of those go into the general pool (all except culture).
4.4 Wealth is extremely useful; it can be used to upgrade military units from obsolete to up-to-date types while keeping their promotions intact; it can be used to purchase things from other civilizations, such as resources, technology, or even military alliances and actions;
Worth mentioning the 10XP cap when upgrading? And that trading cash requires Currency (either you or the AI I think).
4.4 You can connect to other cities either by road (enabled by The Wheel) or water (river or coast, enabled by Sailing; or ocean, enabled by Astronomy).
Sometimes important to know that even without sailing you can trade on rivers inside or running alongside the edge of your cultural borders - if you are landlocked but on a big river system this can save you a couple of techs that are otherwise pretty useless to you.
4.4 Open Borders agreements (enabled by Writing) are also required to enable trade routes.
Foreign trade routes, anyway.
4.4.1 Build the Temple of Artemis world wonder—preferably in a coastal city—which increases trade route income in that city.
Not sure I would recommend this wonder to improve commerce in the early game - before currency you have 1 trade route, worth about 1 commerce, so +100% is +1 commerce from this wonder (it gets better later admittedly, but gets killed off before it actually becomes seriously good). Unless you get GLH as well, then it is worth 2. The 5 GPP it creates is the main reason to get it as far as the early game is concerned. Maybe if it was moved to the mid game section where the commerce part becomes bigger, but then the AI tends to pick this one up quite fast.
4.5 You have to be careful, though. If you remove a citizen from a tile with a town, for example, to make him into a scientist, you may find that the amount of research points produced by the city goes down, not up.
Of course you have to keep in mind at the same time slider changes you may be making in the near future - if you currently have 0% science (building cash to buy upgrades maybe) and did the same thing, your city science output would go up, but then drop down again a few turns later when you change the slider back to 70% science (or whatever).
4.6.1 High-priority builds: banks, markets, grocers; also libraries, monasteries, universities, observatories, laboratories.
Also Harbor, Customs House, (Castle), Airport - you covered all the things that make your existing commerce multiply better, but once you have all them that means anything that increases the cities base commerce is multiplied up.
4.6.1 Low-priority builds: factory
Not sure I agree - forge/factory/coal power are under 1500H (costs 1260H if built Forge/Fact/Power, if no bonuses like OR or from leader traits). If you build those before all the commerce improvements start you have already saved 1800H building your original list (with just 1 monastery), plus you then save (actually multiply) hammers on all the health/happiness buildings, any units you suddenly need to build, and at the end you also gain extra gold/beakers every turn when you switch to building wealth/science in the city.
Of course on an old city most of the buildings are there by the time factory rolls around, so their isn't as much benefit, but for cities you take over (or rebuild after razing a nearby one) at that stage of the game, the hammer bonuses should come in immediately after granary (and maybe lighthouse on the coast, but usually that can wait). Although some of the early commerce boosts are delayed doing it this way, the end of the building comes in much faster and more than pays for itself overall (unless you are rushing to a specific tech during the early part of the new commerce cities lifespan and miss it by a turn!).
4.6.1.2 High-priority builds: religious shrine, market, grocer, bank, airport; harbor (and customs house in BtS) if coastal
The last two create commerce, not cash, so are just as useful in a coastal science city as a wealth city.
Of course in general both a Science and a Wealth city are also commerce cities, so low priority is always to create the other cities buildings (when the sliders aren't going to be staying at around 0% science or wealth so only internal city science/wealth sources are important, but that won't be true for the majority of most beginners games, although I have had games where the science slider never dropped off 100% due to shrine/wonder/corp abuse, so most cities never bothered with banks for example).
4.6.1.2 Wealth City
Also I try to set up Wall Street in a city where the better corporations to spread can be based - well more precisely if your empire is getting large, then a location that can hold the corporations you want to found and spread to yourself, conversely if you are massively outnumbered then a location where you can found the corps you want to spread around the AI. Having the wrong base for my corps is costing me over 1000 gold/turn in one long winded game I am playing, for example. Well 500, the other 500 was me putting the second corp with the first one when it would have gone on the Wall Street city.
4.6.2 Tile Improvements: mine, workshop, lumbermill, watermill (especially on a plains tile with a river); also, build just enough farms so citizens can work the production tiles and still have the city grow.
I often build 1 or 2 farms extra originally and then workshop/watermill them later as the population caps out (either working every tile, or at the happy/health caps). It makes getting to the cap much faster. If you have a couple of food resources in the area this isn't necessary, but for ex-jungle workshop fests it is often needed.
4.6.3 and/or to build a Military Academy (requires
Education; in BtS, Military Science) which makes military builds 50% faster.
I would rarely bother - if you already have forge/factory/power then all builds are +100%. So a 200H unit takes 100H of base production, adding a further 50% production means they take 80H, so you end with 20% more units (4 compared to 5). +2XP or attaching for me. Also on larger maps I tend not to go for the +XPs much, as I end up producing military from many places, so the XP bonus is diluted compared to smaller maps where only 1 or 2 cities will be available for most unit production.
4.6.4 In BtS, the new National Park national wonder will not only alleviate health problems in this city, it will also give you one free specialist for every forest preserve.
Of course every forest you chop down, irrigate, and use the space below, you are getting +2F (after biology), which pays for one specialist. So the gain is +1H +1 happy per forest preserve, and no net gain of specialists. Well it is more complicated than that, as you get the specialists even if you don't work the tile, so you can run more specialists while the city is developing, or in a city with a massive food deficit (tundra forest with no way of irrigating could run 22 specialists, 20 free, two working the tundra forest preserve for 1 food each, to make a city with population 2, 4F. Plus F corporations also make things more complicated as well (you could be developing quite a while, thus getting the non-working the square bonus, but also you might run out of specialist slots unless you switch to Caste System).
5.1 BtS addendum: The expansion pack has improved forts. They now preserve the underlying terrain (including forests). In addition, forts can be used by ships.
You can also base your air units in them (up to 4 per fort I think). Obviously in most cases a defensive land unit gets parked there while they are based there (and especially if it is coastal).
5.1 Caravels and Submarines do not require open borders agreements to enter other Civs’ territory,
Privateers as well, although anyone can attack your Privateers anywhere even if not at war with you.
5.2 You may want to leave units “unpromoted” until you have a better idea which promotion may be most needed. Promotions do not expire over time. Promotions also help heal damage.
One exception to this - if you have an unused promotion past the 10xp mark and you upgrade a unit without a general attached, the XP gets reduced to 10 and you can no longer get the promotion (conversely it is faster to get back to promotions again - if you had a 17xp unit, upgrade it down to 10xp, then the next promotion is at 17xp. If you got a promotion, upgrade and it drops down to 10xp, next promotion at 26xp. (Numbers change a bit for Charismatic, but same general idea).
Well there is a second way that promotions expire. If you let the unit get killed before you use it
5.4 After taking a city, hurry cultural improvements (theatre, courthouse, library, temples, university) to push the borders back out.
Probably more important is to set the cultural slider up by a couple of notches (once the captured cities start coming out of revolt) - most captured cities have enough population to run several towns or similar commerce producers, plus trade route commerce, etc., so you can easily pump out the first couple of cultural borders within 10 turns or so, and then once the war is over the cultural improvements can be built and take back over as you switch back to research.
Or dump Sid's Sushi (or similar) into the city, which can easily be putting out more culture than all the base culture buildings put together.
5.5 You can decrease war weariness the same way you deal with unhappiness in general
Of course here you are actually increase the amount of happiness you are creating, not decreasing war weariness. Only the Police State, Jail and Mt Rushmore actually reduce war weariness (or taking SoZ off an enemy). Nationhood isn't really anything to do with being at war, so seems to fit under the "same way you deal with unhappiness in general" I would think.
5.6 You can also earn the circumnavigation bonus by obtaining other Civs’ world maps that, combined, reveal tiles in the above manner. Without even building a ship!
This also works in reverse. So never sell/trade maps with an AI while you are going about circumnavigating the world - it is quite feasible to have got around 95% of the world and then trade maps with an AI on his turn who knows the missing 5%, and he gets the bonus.
Phew, that is up to half way through, I will try and cover the second half tomorrow maybe.
Quick bonus one before I go back to playing:
3.1 At certain points in the game, it will make sense to “bee-line” to certain technologies (researching prerequisite techs towards a valuable end-goal tech, ignoring others).
Might be worth adding a quick way to bee-line a tech is to go into the technology advisor and click the technology you want to bee-line to, and your advisor will work out a minimal route to that technology and automatically switch to them as each is finished. A warning is that sometimes there is more than one route is available, and you might prefer a different way of doing it.
3.1 At certain points in the game, it will make sense to “bee-line” to certain technologies (researching prerequisite techs towards a valuable end-goal tech, ignoring others).
Might be worth adding a quick way to bee-line a tech is to go into the technology advisor and click the technology you want to bee-line to, and your advisor will work out a minimal route to that technology and automatically switch to them as each is finished. A warning is that sometimes there is more than one route is available, and you might prefer a different way of doing it.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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I can verify this. Do note that if you're using archers instead of warriors to fogbust, hills are just as good due to the inherent hill bonus archers get (on top of the terrain bonus). To survive, warriors should look for forests or ideally forest hills, and take woodsman (that will make them beat archers after fortification bonus with some good consistency).
Attaching isn't very strong either thanks to how collateral dominates warfare in civ IV. IMO MA's are ideal but in BTS they have to wait for MS. Still, you can get them before factory/power often (even if you just trade into MS), so they can be useful. Settled GG's are most important early on or to mass up some super units with IMP.
6.1.1 However, if you’re playing as a Creative leader, Stonehenge is mostly unnecessary since your border will expand automatically anyway.
Conversely Charismatics get an extra happy in every city from Stonehenge (which won't always be immediately beneficial, but will help in the later part of the BCs and early ADs).
6.1.2 BEST NATIONAL WONDERS
Most of this is fairly straightforward - personally I try to avoid combining two hammer bonuses in one city (then you are just creating vanilla units faster in one city). If you combine West Point and Heroic Epic then you can leave that city restocking your army during peacetime when theocracy and vassalage is off, and they are still at the same +4xp that everywhere else builds in war production mode. On the coast as you already note, although as it wants to be a production city, one with not many coast squares if possible.
Moai Statues I don't really consider as part of a production city - to get the best out of it you want lots of water, and then it is nearly all 1H/tile (unless you are Dutch), which would be low for a production city. It is a useful addition to a heavily coastal city with access to some food bonuses (for engineers and/or priests), but I don't think it combines particularly well with most of the other NW because the best location for it will become a hybrid city, and most of the NW want to be in a specialist city.
National Epic/National Park is clearly a good combo - often I place this in a heavy tundra forest: you clear most of the forest/jungle in your good early locations, and the computer hates trees, so the marginal land in tundra that gets left to later in the game can be ideal for this. 20 trees in tundra with no river that would be unworkable above ~3 population until the food corps can be turned in 20 free specialists, the only problem being getting the buildings in place to allow the specialists at any speed (bought with cash is usually the main way), unless you are running Caste System.
NE with Ironworks is clearly also similarly powerful. I quite often put Ironworks with Red Cross on a coastal production city - you can churn out lots of naval units with free medic promotion and still go straight for navigation promotions, rather than having to use 2 promotions to get medic after CI. Useful for transports, carriers, subs, and really anything at sea. You can also create stack defenders like infantry/mech inf/Mobile SAMs and so on with the medic bonus, which is always potentially useful. In peacetime you can bulk up your border cities with similar units created from here, freeing them to take two more level of city garrison while still making sure every city has a medic available for quick turnaround of aircraft, etc.
Wall Street: if you think the game is going to go to the point that corps will have a major impact, then it can really pay off choosing a Wall Street site that has the right resources to allow the corp to be based in that city.
7.1 You can win a game based on culture, by having three cities producing Legendary culture (50,000 culture points and above, normal speed).
I read this that you would have to produce 50,000 culture per turn to win. Maybe say "three cities that have reached Legendary culture", or something like that?
7.2 Barbarian animals will not enter your cultural territory. Barbarian military units, however, definitely will.
Although usually not immediately (depending on how hard you are looking for them when they first appear), especially on lower levels. Barbarian warriors (or worse) appearing is a stark warning to start gearing up to deal with them if you haven't already.
7.2 All buildings that produce culture will produce double their amount of original culture after 1000 years of game time have passed since they were built. This doubling effect only occurs once per building.
Because so many turns are after 1800AD, this means that it can be useful to get all the base culture buildings out by 800AD in any city you might use for a cultural victory. Obviously the earlier the better, but building them around 800AD is worth pretty much double the final culture of building them in 1050AD. Obviously this doesn't matter anywhere else in your empire unless you plan to be peaceful then your border cities might similarly want to be prioritised around this time period.
8.1 Specialists: Running specialists will contribute 2 GPP per turn towards a Great Person of a
matching type
3 GPP isn't it? Or is that Marathon specific? I thought it was the target which changed rather than the output per pop as the speed changes. Might be worth noting also that free specialists and corn fed specialists earn GPP, settled great people don't.
8.2.5 The best use of Great Engineers to rush-build a World Wonder.
And particularly useful allowing you to selectively build most Wonders anywhere you like - at the risk of moving the engineer a few turns to the ideal location.
That is up to Diplomacy done (which I am crap at so that part should be quick). Have to say again - great guide, I am learning/thinking about loads of things I do as I go through it.
Conversely Charismatics get an extra happy in every city from Stonehenge (which won't always be immediately beneficial, but will help in the later part of the BCs and early ADs).
6.1.2 BEST NATIONAL WONDERS
Most of this is fairly straightforward - personally I try to avoid combining two hammer bonuses in one city (then you are just creating vanilla units faster in one city). If you combine West Point and Heroic Epic then you can leave that city restocking your army during peacetime when theocracy and vassalage is off, and they are still at the same +4xp that everywhere else builds in war production mode. On the coast as you already note, although as it wants to be a production city, one with not many coast squares if possible.
Moai Statues I don't really consider as part of a production city - to get the best out of it you want lots of water, and then it is nearly all 1H/tile (unless you are Dutch), which would be low for a production city. It is a useful addition to a heavily coastal city with access to some food bonuses (for engineers and/or priests), but I don't think it combines particularly well with most of the other NW because the best location for it will become a hybrid city, and most of the NW want to be in a specialist city.
National Epic/National Park is clearly a good combo - often I place this in a heavy tundra forest: you clear most of the forest/jungle in your good early locations, and the computer hates trees, so the marginal land in tundra that gets left to later in the game can be ideal for this. 20 trees in tundra with no river that would be unworkable above ~3 population until the food corps can be turned in 20 free specialists, the only problem being getting the buildings in place to allow the specialists at any speed (bought with cash is usually the main way), unless you are running Caste System.
NE with Ironworks is clearly also similarly powerful. I quite often put Ironworks with Red Cross on a coastal production city - you can churn out lots of naval units with free medic promotion and still go straight for navigation promotions, rather than having to use 2 promotions to get medic after CI. Useful for transports, carriers, subs, and really anything at sea. You can also create stack defenders like infantry/mech inf/Mobile SAMs and so on with the medic bonus, which is always potentially useful. In peacetime you can bulk up your border cities with similar units created from here, freeing them to take two more level of city garrison while still making sure every city has a medic available for quick turnaround of aircraft, etc.
Wall Street: if you think the game is going to go to the point that corps will have a major impact, then it can really pay off choosing a Wall Street site that has the right resources to allow the corp to be based in that city.
7.1 You can win a game based on culture, by having three cities producing Legendary culture (50,000 culture points and above, normal speed).
I read this that you would have to produce 50,000 culture per turn to win. Maybe say "three cities that have reached Legendary culture", or something like that?
7.2 Barbarian animals will not enter your cultural territory. Barbarian military units, however, definitely will.
Although usually not immediately (depending on how hard you are looking for them when they first appear), especially on lower levels. Barbarian warriors (or worse) appearing is a stark warning to start gearing up to deal with them if you haven't already.
7.2 All buildings that produce culture will produce double their amount of original culture after 1000 years of game time have passed since they were built. This doubling effect only occurs once per building.
Because so many turns are after 1800AD, this means that it can be useful to get all the base culture buildings out by 800AD in any city you might use for a cultural victory. Obviously the earlier the better, but building them around 800AD is worth pretty much double the final culture of building them in 1050AD. Obviously this doesn't matter anywhere else in your empire unless you plan to be peaceful then your border cities might similarly want to be prioritised around this time period.
8.1 Specialists: Running specialists will contribute 2 GPP per turn towards a Great Person of a
matching type
3 GPP isn't it? Or is that Marathon specific? I thought it was the target which changed rather than the output per pop as the speed changes. Might be worth noting also that free specialists and corn fed specialists earn GPP, settled great people don't.
8.2.5 The best use of Great Engineers to rush-build a World Wonder.
And particularly useful allowing you to selectively build most Wonders anywhere you like - at the risk of moving the engineer a few turns to the ideal location.
That is up to Diplomacy done (which I am crap at so that part should be quick). Have to say again - great guide, I am learning/thinking about loads of things I do as I go through it.
10.1 Alternatively, having a different religion is often a source of tension with other civs, though some are more fanatical about it than others.
I think you mean "conversely"?
10.1 Be sure to build the Monastery for any and all religions that spread to your cities.
Only if you want to spread it after Scientific Method and wouldn't want to swap to the Organized Religion civic, that is. Usually it is good to have this option, but it isn't always necessary.
13 There is an operating cost for each city which is based upon the number of
resources that the corporation is consuming; the more resources consumed, the higher the
operating cost.
Operating costs vary from city to city, I don't know for sure but I think population impacts the cost (if it was just the resource count, it should be the same everywhere - the output of food/hammers/culture/science/money is, but the cost varies).
13 Environmentalism allows corporations to operate, but with maintenance costs increased by 25% (50% higher than Free Market!).
Free market is at 75% of normal, Environmentalism makes it 125% of normal, so that is 66.67% more.
14 There is a small chance of this happening for a worked mine each turn. The mine must therefore be within a city’s fat cross, and must have a citizen assigned to work it.)
I am fairly sure any mine can convert, whether it is worked or not.
15.2 Tip: If you’re pursuing this victory condition, you will likely want to run the State Property civic as soon as possible to offset the maintenance costs of a large empire. This means that corporations will become useless to you, so don’t bother founding any.
Corporations are massively powerful as you build a large empire (in the late game obviously) - you have them in more cities, and you get many copies of all resources, so the bonus from them grows per city. Sure the costs build up as well, but the return is far greater - sure you might have to switch some cities to produce wealth in the worst case, but the extra production in your cities (plus all the extra population/specialists/etc.) easily makes up for it.
Latest game example: 161 cities, about 140 have SS/MI for 32F/125C/33H each, corp costs 50-130g, average of 100g (before courthouse) dwarfs any distance/no cities costs (total 7000 for corps, 1000 for the rest). But then compare to the benefit: 33H with 100% production bonuses produces 66 wealth when you have nothing else to build, so that covers the corp costs already if needed. Converting food surplus to a cash amount isn't easy, but merchants 2F=6G after bonuses, scientists are effectively the same assuming you still want to research - and +32F means you will want lots of future tech, engineer 2F=>2H=>4G building wealth with bonuses, priests are 4G each effectively, citizens even are 2G. Running caste system and 16 extra merchants is the simplest case (if you can live with emancipation unhappiness), at 16x6=96G. Dumping 125 base culture per turn in every border city virtually avoids the need for war in the first place, so that has to have some monetary value. Then you have all the great people you can earn with over a hundred cities rapidly running dozens of specialists (and anything below about size 30 or so growing in just a few turns). Oh, and of course the bonus at the founding city for another 8-12/city for each corp.
So in this example cost/city has reached about 50g, but the benefit is at least 150g/city and probably much more (depending how much value you have for great people, culture, eps). And this is as true for cities planted out in the icy wastes as your major production areas.
Of course when you get to that point playing out the rest of the conquest becomes a bit pointless because I can make an army to trash any opponent with about 2 turns production, it is just way too much effort though with the result of the game so obvious.
General Note
Obviously the idea of a lot of my above comments is not to add in this amount of complexity to an already long basic strategy guide: in many cases if you agree with my point, it might just need a change of emphasis or wording.
I think you mean "conversely"?
10.1 Be sure to build the Monastery for any and all religions that spread to your cities.
Only if you want to spread it after Scientific Method and wouldn't want to swap to the Organized Religion civic, that is. Usually it is good to have this option, but it isn't always necessary.
13 There is an operating cost for each city which is based upon the number of
resources that the corporation is consuming; the more resources consumed, the higher the
operating cost.
Operating costs vary from city to city, I don't know for sure but I think population impacts the cost (if it was just the resource count, it should be the same everywhere - the output of food/hammers/culture/science/money is, but the cost varies).
13 Environmentalism allows corporations to operate, but with maintenance costs increased by 25% (50% higher than Free Market!).
Free market is at 75% of normal, Environmentalism makes it 125% of normal, so that is 66.67% more.
14 There is a small chance of this happening for a worked mine each turn. The mine must therefore be within a city’s fat cross, and must have a citizen assigned to work it.)
I am fairly sure any mine can convert, whether it is worked or not.
15.2 Tip: If you’re pursuing this victory condition, you will likely want to run the State Property civic as soon as possible to offset the maintenance costs of a large empire. This means that corporations will become useless to you, so don’t bother founding any.
Corporations are massively powerful as you build a large empire (in the late game obviously) - you have them in more cities, and you get many copies of all resources, so the bonus from them grows per city. Sure the costs build up as well, but the return is far greater - sure you might have to switch some cities to produce wealth in the worst case, but the extra production in your cities (plus all the extra population/specialists/etc.) easily makes up for it.
Latest game example: 161 cities, about 140 have SS/MI for 32F/125C/33H each, corp costs 50-130g, average of 100g (before courthouse) dwarfs any distance/no cities costs (total 7000 for corps, 1000 for the rest). But then compare to the benefit: 33H with 100% production bonuses produces 66 wealth when you have nothing else to build, so that covers the corp costs already if needed. Converting food surplus to a cash amount isn't easy, but merchants 2F=6G after bonuses, scientists are effectively the same assuming you still want to research - and +32F means you will want lots of future tech, engineer 2F=>2H=>4G building wealth with bonuses, priests are 4G each effectively, citizens even are 2G. Running caste system and 16 extra merchants is the simplest case (if you can live with emancipation unhappiness), at 16x6=96G. Dumping 125 base culture per turn in every border city virtually avoids the need for war in the first place, so that has to have some monetary value. Then you have all the great people you can earn with over a hundred cities rapidly running dozens of specialists (and anything below about size 30 or so growing in just a few turns). Oh, and of course the bonus at the founding city for another 8-12/city for each corp.
So in this example cost/city has reached about 50g, but the benefit is at least 150g/city and probably much more (depending how much value you have for great people, culture, eps). And this is as true for cities planted out in the icy wastes as your major production areas.
Of course when you get to that point playing out the rest of the conquest becomes a bit pointless because I can make an army to trash any opponent with about 2 turns production, it is just way too much effort though with the result of the game so obvious.
General Note
Obviously the idea of a lot of my above comments is not to add in this amount of complexity to an already long basic strategy guide: in many cases if you agree with my point, it might just need a change of emphasis or wording.
Seconded. Great job, as a Civ newcomer, much appreciated.
NeverMind
Proud to be Russian
Thanks a lot for this guide, Sisiutil!
We posted the russian translation of your guide at Russian Civ-Wiki.
We posted the russian translation of your guide at Russian Civ-Wiki.
Thank you for the guide. It's really helped (and is continuing to help) this old-school civ player out.
When I first tried CIV4 out, I was using the old REX strategy and having all kinds of problems (naturally). Then I conquered an enemy's foreign capital (on a different landmass). Despite having a huge army in it, it culture flipped soon after. I was so disgusted I shelved CIV4 and didn't touch it for nearly four years.
Civilization Revolution got me back into things; my PS3 is new, and I thought, why not, it's certainly a change of pace from your average console shooter or whatnot. I liked it a lot, so decided to give CIV4 another go.
After getting my head handed to me for two games at Noble level, I took some advice from both the guide and the Condensed Tips posts, and took the Romans this time, with Augustus. My fav is Hatshepsut, because I am (or was!) a sit-back, reactionary player who likes to build and has acute Wonder-itis.
This time, I went for Praetorians and Catapults immediately, ignored most if not all of the early world wonders, didn't care about religion, just get that martial machine running. Used a Cottage Industry model.
I put the AI on it's heels from very early to nearly the entire game, wiped out two foes very early (the French and the Aztecs), pushed the other civs off "my continent" (Vikings, Egyptians, and Persians), and never looked back. During the periods where I was struggling to "digest" the cities I conquered (economy), I'd build infrastructure and do a bit of dimestore diplomacy and tech trading.
Anyway, I not only won my first Noble game, but got the highest score, and the Caesar rating on the comparison chart. I had just finished Fission when I got the Domination victory. I really had to "play against type" and fight my instincts to sit back on my laurels and build, and go after all the other civs aggressively. Heh, I would have won the game much earlier, but the damn civs - all three of them - moved onto a "one square" island, where the only way I could finish them off was to get Marines. Stinker.
Thanks Sisiutil, and thank you, Condensed Tips.
When I first tried CIV4 out, I was using the old REX strategy and having all kinds of problems (naturally). Then I conquered an enemy's foreign capital (on a different landmass). Despite having a huge army in it, it culture flipped soon after. I was so disgusted I shelved CIV4 and didn't touch it for nearly four years.
Civilization Revolution got me back into things; my PS3 is new, and I thought, why not, it's certainly a change of pace from your average console shooter or whatnot. I liked it a lot, so decided to give CIV4 another go.
After getting my head handed to me for two games at Noble level, I took some advice from both the guide and the Condensed Tips posts, and took the Romans this time, with Augustus. My fav is Hatshepsut, because I am (or was!) a sit-back, reactionary player who likes to build and has acute Wonder-itis.
This time, I went for Praetorians and Catapults immediately, ignored most if not all of the early world wonders, didn't care about religion, just get that martial machine running. Used a Cottage Industry model.
I put the AI on it's heels from very early to nearly the entire game, wiped out two foes very early (the French and the Aztecs), pushed the other civs off "my continent" (Vikings, Egyptians, and Persians), and never looked back. During the periods where I was struggling to "digest" the cities I conquered (economy), I'd build infrastructure and do a bit of dimestore diplomacy and tech trading.
Anyway, I not only won my first Noble game, but got the highest score, and the Caesar rating on the comparison chart. I had just finished Fission when I got the Domination victory. I really had to "play against type" and fight my instincts to sit back on my laurels and build, and go after all the other civs aggressively. Heh, I would have won the game much earlier, but the damn civs - all three of them - moved onto a "one square" island, where the only way I could finish them off was to get Marines. Stinker.
Thanks Sisiutil, and thank you, Condensed Tips.
Just FYI, it looks like an outdated version of the document is available here: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/sisiutil.php
Might be worth updating, if possible.
Might be worth updating, if possible.
