Strategy Article Help - New Player

[Winz]

I played Civ 4 years ago, but staying up until 3 am was interfering with getting to work.
Recently retired, so I reinstalled Civ 4 and began to try to get a handle on the game.

One useful strategy article came from user "DaveMcW" who hasn't posted in over a year.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/cottages.301724/

Part of his advice is:
Optimal cottage growth with unlimited workers:
1. Farm everything until food_surplus = final_number_of_cottages. Put extra citizens on cottages.
2. Convert all farms to cottages when population = total_happiness - food_score.

I'm struggling to understand point 2. I think that total_happiness is the number of happy faces (not regarding the number of unhappy ones). But what is food_score mean? Is that the current food surplus? Is it the food surplus from the test best tiles? Or something else?

Winz

 

[Fish Man]

I haven’t really looked at it but that guide seems outdated at best and downright wrong at worst. With few exceptions you should almost never put farms on non-resource tiles, except for irrigation, for starters. Also the key mechanics to success early-game are worker control and whip/chopping. Post a shadow game for people to give you more concrete advice. Also look at @Lain ’s playthroughs which are the highest-quality ones out there.

 

[krikav]

DaveMcW is trying to illustrate some important concepts of city growth and tile use. Specifically around cottages.
He seem to use a simplified (?) model of some sort to give city spots "points" and treat them accordingly.

I _think_ "2." basically means "Once your town has grown to it's target size, you can convert that citys farms to more cottages."

Here is a current thread where we focus alot on learning, you can probably find alot of useful stuff in it:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/shadow-game-for-an-old-dude.636725/page-8#post-15233425

 

[sampsa]

I think most articles and playthroughs from 10 years ago should be disregarded. Discussions revolve around rather nonsensical debate over "SE/CE" and many things are completely ignored like just maximizing your empire output and efficiency. That being said there is nothing wrong with the advice in that article, although it could be summarized as "Build a city next to a -resource, get a granary up asap, build cottages".

You will learn much more by for example watching Lain play https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBiPHqnZ3mwIqtraltox6jg. He likes them cottages.

 

[Anysense]

@Winz I think you got it right, food_score = food surplus, although it does not seem important to me what he says in point 2. The article isn't bad, but it only offers you a few rules of thumb and some reasoning behind them. It is good enough to get started, but what you need to learn, if you want to progress as a player, is to make your own decisions in every particular situation.

More specifically, the concept of cities being divided into two categories (hammer and commerce) is a very simplified one. Although it has an advantage of being simple, it is also very inaccurate, because it does not take into account a whole lot of important factors. Nowadays such simplified approach is generally considered outdated. CIV is a tremendous optimization problem. Naturally, more complex models have been developed, more accurate, but more sophisticated.

The main idea is very simple: no two maps are the same, and every map needs individual approach, in accordance with its particularities. That brings us to what I said above: learn how to make good decisions, i.e. the ones best in this case, rather than in some theoretical/average/typical/standard one.

That being said, one of the best ways to learn is to watch strong players (like Lain) play the game, especially when there is good commentary; or to read threads where people discuss the game. You also may start a thread dedicated to a game you played or are playing now.