So apparently, I suck at Emperor. How do you build GPP cities?

[GenericKen]

Hiya.

I gave up playing civ4 about 6 months ago when getting into WoW (quit), and then a proper job. At the time, I would just whomp Monarch, and I really didn't see the appeal of playing with stupid handicaps by exploiting weaknesses in AI.

Multiplayer was fun for a bit, but there's no way to ever actually see a game to its conclusion, since gamse are usually over long before anyone manages to win. Plus, it was too much of a twitch game, timing your movements to within a quarter second of the turn timer so that you can move your cats twice to wipe out the enemy stack. No fun.


I continued to read the GotM reports, though, as I always found them entertaining. Gradually, I've built up a bloodlust for the 300k score domination victory in the 1400s (as opposed to the 1800s with bombers and crap after strategic politicing).

Apparently, I suck at this.

I always seem to be completely incapable of snowballing opponents in a cascade effect. Too often, my economy starts collapsing or I fall too far behind on tech for my tastes (or I want to pop borders, or I want to start infrastructure) and I'm forced to shift away from military. At which point I find myself exactly 1 unit short of taking the capital or something.

So I suppose that leads me to my primary question: How the heck do you build GPP cities? All the strategy guides say to plop it down as maybe your second city on some high food spot, but when the city's limited to 3 pop because of happiness, how the heck do you build the library? Do you slingshot oracle for caste system? Do you build up a bunch of unhappy population and then whip them away (lowering your happiness limit to 2)? If you build it on some high food high hammers spot, shouldn't that city be pumping units instead of GPP and wonders?


Other quips I have:

I had never personally gotten into the habit of leveraging GPs or religion, and I never feel sure exatly when to invest and when to withdraw from the investment into them. Some games, I'm just tempted to beeline to free religion to save myself the turn of religious anarchy. But in those games, I don't control 33% of the landmass by 1000AD.

Also never really got comfortable with culture boundaries. Impossibly difficult to expand w/ some leaders, absurdly easy with others. Don't much like the 9 tile city, and the 30 hammer investment into an oblisk is significantly less trivial than I thought at first (it's a whole axeman).

One thing I never got used to, even from Civ 1, was constantly checking the other leaders for new techs and trade opportunities. While civ4 is nicer, it still feels like an absurd amount of micromanagement to hit f4 every turn and try and remember if a tech is new or not. Are there any mods out there that pop up useful alerts each turn? Like maybe new tradeable tech, new tradable resource, population about to overgrow happiness/health/improved tiles, city working unimproved/non-forest/non-coastal tiles? I always thought that the alert system Civ4 was packing was pretty lacking.

 

[Shillen]

One thing I never got used to, even from Civ 1, was constantly checking the other leaders for new techs and trade opportunities. While civ4 is nicer, it still feels like an absurd amount of micromanagement to hit f4 every turn and try and remember if a tech is new or not. Are there any mods out there that pop up useful alerts each turn? Like maybe new tradeable tech, new tradable resource, population about to overgrow happiness/health/improved tiles, city working unimproved/non-forest/non-coastal tiles? I always thought that the alert system Civ4 was packing was pretty lacking.

The HoF mod has alerts. It will only alert you the turn after a tech is for trade, though, not the first turn the tech is available. So it's still worthwhile to check the diplo screen every turn, but for someone who forgets to it's probably useful. edit: Note: The latest release of the HoF mod contains a bug with whipping overflow. So you might want to wait until they release a new build without that bug in it if you whip a lot.

As for great person farms they're not easy to get going on higher difficulties unless you have a source of happiness. Generally it's easy to trade for happy resources fairly early in the game, though, or get a religion spread to you, or get hereditary rule. I don't know who advised you to make your second city a GP farm. That's not usually a good idea. It might be a good idea to hire a scientist/priest in one of your cities early on to get an early great person but you don't have to do this in a "GP farm". My GP farm usually isn't running full bore until the early AD's.

 

[Pantastic]

There are two forms of GP farms. The 'standard' version has a lot of food, and generates GPPs by running a lot of specialists, maybe under caste system. You're going to want NE (of course) and Globe Theater in the city, then let it grow huge.

The alternate form of GP farm doesn't use many specialists. Take a high production city, build wonders that give appropriate GPPs, stick in National Epic (usually in the queue right after Great Library), and maybe add a few specialists. Often I'll end up doing this in my capital where the +50% production from beurocracy helps a lot.

I often don't bother with a conventional GP farm at all, it requires sacrificing what would be a great commerce city or whip military (HE + GT) city for a so-so bonus. I usually need my early cities getting my economy off the ground and pumping out units, not focusing on growing to be a GP farm. If I do go with a conventional GP farm, it's almost never in a city that I founded but in a captured capital, since they tend to have a ton of food availible and come after I've gotten my initial empire off the ground. You might not have the capital until later, but a GP farm is going to take a long time to mature anyway.

 

[yavoon]

GPP cities aren't important for beating emperor.

 

[GenericKen]

Well, I didn't want to just beat emperor, I wanted to beat it before the 1600s. To do that, I presume you try to take advantage of early game boosts (like cheap early GPP) while sacrificing late game stabilitiy.

 

[cabert]

Well, I didn't want to just beat emperor, I wanted to beat it before the 1600s. To do that, I presume you try to take advantage of early game boosts (like cheap early GPP) while sacrificing late game stabilitiy.

i think building a gp farm as second city is .
Most of the time, you don't even know writing when you plant your second city!

however

if you really want to do it you have to :
- find a Spot with forests and a food bonus.
- settle (obviously)
- improve the high food tile
- chop a library while working the high food tile
- hire 2 scientists as soon as you're size 3.
this is assuming you want GS!
For others, it's even less an option, since you would need a market or temples or a forge+GE generating wonders.