Some advice on SE?

Morthis

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 1, 2008
Messages
69
Hello all. I just started playing Civ 4 again, and was hoping I could get some feedback on what I'm doing/right wrong. Probably somewhat long post, so I appreciate any replies. :)

Back when I used to play, I played mainly with a CE. It works well, but I got a bit tired of it, so I decided to try a SE. I've done 3 games with it so far, and was very happy with it. Although it feels like pyramids are pretty critical to the early game for it. I'm finding I have to drop my science slider way low because my maintenance is adding up and I have little commerce (and I wasn't expanding like crazy), which means the SE needs to start early. With representation even citizens will be useful for that (until you can get more scientists).

I also found that towards the end, emancipation became a real problem. I was running the caste system ever since it became available (since my buildings allowed far fewer scientists than I actually had food for). Eventually I was forced to switch to emancipation myself and simply turned the spare citizens into merchants (so I could move my slider up) and other specialists (at least with representation they still give 3 science).

Anyway those were some general observations on the SE. Any advice on that would be appreciated. I also have some specific questions about city placement, and what you do with it, so I'll go into that next.

I used the world builder on my initial save to give me all techs and the map so you can see the resources available. Obviously ignore any resources that wouldn't have shown up until later in the game (like the coal and aluminum near Washington) since I didn't know about those.

I'll put the pictures in spoiler tags so it isn't as cluttering.

This was my settler's starting position. I was pretty happy with it, 2 good food resources nearby, and a ton of plains/hills. I turned this city into a producer city and it became my main military/wonder building city. Not much to say about this one, I think this city worked well.
Spoiler :


This was my second city. I got a settler from a goodie hut. Since I already had a strong producer city, I wanted a good one with a lot of food to start the SE. I picked that spot because of the pig and corn, but I'm not sure how well it worked. Obviously the pig and corn were great, but it had so many plains, which weren't terribly useful until biology (since they only provide enough food to sustain the people working it). The city still worked decently well thanks to the pig and corn, but I'm not sure if I optimized that city well enough. With the water and plains tiles only generating enough food to sustain themselves, I was left wondering there was something better I could have done here. Also of note is that the horses weren't yet revealed at the time I built it.
Spoiler :


With my second city failing to claim those horses once I saw them (Mansa Musa got to it first), I built this one to claim the other horses near me. I was planning to turn it into another food/SE city, but again, the water tiles don't seem terribly useful when they can only sustain themselves. This city was more of a mix between production and research by the end of the game.
Spoiler :


This city was primarily built to claim the iron as soon as it was revealed (especially since I had no copper). I don't recall what my original intent of the city was, but it ended up producing a lot of hammers, so I turned it into a production city. I know at the time I built it, I did not expect it to produce that many hammers (I guess I'm pretty bad at looking at tiles and knowing what you can expect from it in a fully grown city). This city was almost as good as Washington in production (mainly because I built ironworks in this one).
Spoiler :


This was the last city I build for a good while. I had Shaka above that last city, and Mansa Musa above the rest of my territory, with Suryavarman II on the right. Mansa became a vassal state to me, and I wiped out Shaka, but that wasn't until much later in the game (It feels like waited way too long to expand after those 5 cities), around the gunpowder era.

This city became my science city. Lots of food available, but too much water again. For a SE, the water tiles seem mostly wasted, beyond being able to build ships or resources in water. Overall I do think the city worked fairly well though.
Spoiler :


Overall I thought I did pretty well, but I'm not sure I'm that good at optimal placement yet. For example, if resources are placed in such a way I could either claim it all with one city (but then the gaps between cities are too small to build more), or in a situation like that would it be better to place 2 cities sharing the resources (without overlapping tiles)? Typically I try to build that one perfect one, but I'm thinking it might be better to build 2 cities in cases of food resources (for hammers the one city thing seems to be a good idea though, due to things like ironworks and bureaucracy only working on one city and really pumping up those hammers).

Anyway I'll take any feedback you guys can give me, thanks. =)
 
To overcome the eman. issue, build theaters and coloseums and run the culture slider at like 20%.
Also, a mixed economy seems to work best. 1 or two GPF with lots of farms, then the rest either cottage spams commerce cities or well mined production cities. And only build the buildings that match up with the specialty of the city (ie. no markets in the GPF).
 
And only build the buildings that match up with the specialty of the city (ie. no markets in the GPF).

Market and grocer provide other benefits. Happiness and health are very important in a SE.
 
Eh... that's later game issues, though. Market/grocer won't make a huge impact until you start building factories and engaging in long wars with losses.
 
If you've got a shrine city... then market/grocer/bank/wall street it. I've found that my SE needs Pyramids/Great Library/Holy City (holy city is by conquest usually). It sounds like you're expanding too fast, or you don't have enough scientists up. Or, if you must expand rapidly then build your cities surrounding the capitol to cut maintenance. Maybe consider picking a secondary leader trait of Organized to compliment your style of early expansion. Remember not all of your cities can be GP farms. If it makes sense to make a 50% cottage/50% production city then do so.
 
Which leader did you play as? Some leaders are better suited for the SE than others. Roosevelt get a better shot at the pyramids through IND, and Lincoln gets more GPs through PHI.

A couple of comments on city placement:

- Your second city should have been placed one tile to the East. This puts it on the coast, which lets you build a lighthouse (+1 food on water tiles - this includes the lake which becomes a 3 food tile) as well as a harbor for extra health from seafood. Also you lose some of the useless plains and get an extra grassland tile. This move would let you run at least one extra specialist.

- The last city would have been better placed one tile to the South. This lets you work both food resources before the first border pop, and gives you another lake tile (again, that's 3 food with a lighthouse). Also, the hill across the water could be mined so that you can actually build something in the city - as is, it has practically no production.

One more thing (you may know this already) - once you research Civil Service, you can chain irrigate to the corn resources. Farmed grain resources give extra food if they are adjacent to a fresh water source, or connected to fresh water by a farm chain.
 
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