What is wrong with commerce citizen automation?

[aaronflavor]

I've played a good amount of Civ4, and a lesser amount of Warlords, and even less Beyond the Sword. The expansions turned me off enough that I mostly just kept playing the original Civ4, but I'm trying to give BtS another good shot. It's obvious that citizen automation works differently than it did in Civ4, but there's something happening that I really don't understand.

I'm playing single-player as Ragnar in a Prince/Hemispheres-Huge/Normal-Speed game, currently 225 AD, and I'm trapped on a continent with Willem van Oranje, Cautious, who will not trade tech with me. So my research is just really slogging here at 30%, and my economy is awful, and I'm trying to "debug" this to figure out what's going on.

Then I realized the problem: the citizen automation isn't working cottages. It doesn't look like a single one of my cities is working a cottage. Even if set it to "commerce," it chooses to work the tiles that only give hammers, instead of the cottages. It's also assigning one Science specialist, which doesn't generate any commerce either. Basically, this just seems totally wrong. (See the attached screenshot.)

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening to me? In Civ4 and Warlords, I very rarely turned off citizen automation, as it generally was doing approximately the right thing. Is BtS automation just bugged, or am I missing something? I've also attached the save, in case that's helpful.

 

[CivNoobie]

the problem is that some of ur cities have the 'growth' setting turned off which means that the city will not work on anything that has food.

2nd you should be teching currency especially since those sparsely placed cities are a drain on ur $$$ (huge maps are for marathon/epic speed, not normal)

also, some of your cities are horribly placed i.e. without hills (see Roskilde and Jellings)

here i tech'd towards optics so that I can discover other civilisations to trade techs. The dutch weren't trading with us no matter what, but i somehow got him to give me polytheism at no cost which allowed us to grab monarchy, since the happiness cap was crippling the cities so much.

i wasted about 7 turns on teching music thinking that i would be the first to discover it and be getting a great artist.

feel free to have a look at the game that i attached

 

[CivNoobie]

oh i almost forgot, don't waste time on monument

 

[elmurcis]

2 reasons I see here what I have experienced by myself - you are on happy cap (automatic citizens try to limit growth if on happy cap with little more food emphasize if have slavery.. thats why scientist specialist and not cottage for 7th citizen - scientist is better than cottage). And all other tiles city work in picture are better than basic cottage (only town will be better than improved cow or seafood or iron/copper). Get happy cap up atleast 1 pop and your capital should start working grassland cottage..

 

[lymond]

Yep...pretty simple...coastal tiles (currently) are better commerce than the cottages (which are a waste in this city by the way). It's not the "improvement" but the actual tile output.

(BTS is far far superior to Vanilla and Warlords)

Actually, only reason I used city tile automation in Vanilla/Warlords is that in BTS normal tile selection is far better. I had to use food or production focus in Vanilla as cities would automatically work crappy tiles constantly. Very poor design. The only quirk in BTS is that it wants to automatically run spy specialists after a Courthouse.

I don't even need to use city automation in BTS except in extreme cases.

 

[lymond]

The reason your economy is in shambles is a) you don't have Currency b) your empire is pretty wide spread so you are getting a lot of distance maintenance. Courthouse might help some too. I usually focus on Currency first unless a make a specific play for CoL for whatever reason. Mids would work well in this situation since, even though Rag is FIN, this is not the best land to cottage. However, you do have good food here for running specialists in Representation

Furthermore you have not even produced your first Great Scientist much less your second at this point.

Some city placements are perplexing and you had some decent closer spots to settle. Looks like you just went for certain resources without considering the cost of cities early. You need to plan that out more carefully, especially in iso/semi-iso when you don't have the benefit of more trade routes and tech trades.

AIs are less likely to trade techs in semi-iso as they consider all their tech monopolies. There are exceptions based on certain techs, leaders and/or attitudes.

Lödöse settling position is bizarre. Why in the world would you not settle 1S for fish. Do you realize how important food is in this game.

Same with other cities like marble and fur. You neglected food or settled with food outside first ring. Don't do that unless playing a CReative leader.

You could have held off on SE cities for a while until you establish an economy. The 2 happies were not that urgent.

Seems you have no understanding of Great People usage.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that you are having trouble with this game due to the fact that you are deficient in certain basic concepts of the game. City governors are far far far the being the problem.

If you want to learn how to play the game better, I suggest spending more time in the Strategy & Tips forum than General forum.

Also, I recommend getting the BUG mod...another one of the thousands of reasons to play BTS over other versions.

edit: OMG! you don't use slavery

 

[strijder20]

Try changing your build order. When on food focus the AI will work mines instead of farms when building a granary. Might be the case here too.

 

[aaronflavor]

I appreciate all of the advice on broader strategy, but I was actually mainly interested in the specific automation problem. It's true, there's a lot of room for improvement, but I'm only on Prince, which is relatively easy; I'm just trying to play casually to get a feel for BtS.

In Civ4, the automation would have been working those cottages, and by about this point, with Financial, I'd have a fairly significant amount of gold coming out of them, and my economy would be different. The real problem now is that when I add more cottages, unless I micromanage the cities, I don't have any faith that it will magically start allocating to them. Sure, cottages aren't pulling in much right now, but once they're towns, I'm pretty much guaranteed a win.

I really don't understand this. It really seems like the commerce button is just bugged, if it would rather work pure production tiles and scientists when I'm asking for commerce. And if that isn't going to change, I don't see how I can possibly play without micromanaging cities to force it to work cottages, because ultimately, it's going to be the towns that win the game.


More broadly on strategy, yeah, the city placement is pretty sloppy. Lödöse in particular I marked before I had completely scouted, and I got distracted by a Barbarian city, so I didn't notice the fish. (I'd very much prefer two grasslands tiles to three ocean tiles otherwise.)

I haven't played on this map type before (Hemispheres), and I was expecting there to be a more obvious GP city choice (nice river with some floodplanes or something), which didn't really materialize, which is why I didn't really go out of my way to make that happen. Because so much else was going wrong, I didn't priorize getting GPs going early, but like I said, Prince, so no big deal.

The entire reason I'm grabbing the luxury resources is to try to get the economy going; the happy cap is pretty much ruining me. Sure, the cities are expensive, but the extra two workers per city will definitely pay for it.

Sure, Currency would really help my economy, but so would a ton of the other basic techs that I don't yet have, because my research rate is terrible, and I beelined to a tech that turned out to be useless by the time I realized I was alone with someone who wasn't going to be trading with me. Even now, I tend to think that going straight to Optics is the only reasonable thing to do.

The bottom line is that unless the automation is going to work cottages on cities that I intend to be commerce cities, the basic way that I used to play casually in Civ4 isn't going to work in BtS. Was there some major rule or gameplay change somewhere in there that makes this no longer the right way to do things?

 

[lymond]

Try changing your build order. When on food focus the AI will work mines instead of farms when building a granary. Might be the case here too.

I think the OP improving his gameplay would be a far better endeavor over worrying about such minor little things as city governors. Cities are so easy to micro in the early game and really it is must when you move up to higher levels.

(And why would you want to adjust build order to adjust your tiles temporarily. That makes no sense. You want to build what you want to build or need to build, you don't want your tiles to change because of this. Micro your cities...at least occasionally to lock in the tiles/specialists)

 

[Yudishtira]

...I'm only on Prince...
I don't see how I can possibly play without micromanaging cities to force it to work cottages...

That's the whole secret. If you want to use automation, you don't want to play above Warlord. Same goes for workers.

 

[lymond]

In Civ4, the automation would have been working those cottages

I only play Vanilla for the GOTMs every now and then, but I don't think you are right. I still think Vanilla would work the coastal tiles or it is simply the fact that the automation in Vanilla is far worse than BTS. It is looking at true commerce, not cottages. The commerce on the coastal tiles exceeds that of non-riverside cottages. So until you develop them they are not going to "register" with the guvnah. Your looking at this as "commerce" means cottage when "commerce" means "commerce".

(it would be entirely different on a land based river city with FIN cottages that get 3 commerce out the gate)

I think you are looking at it a bit obtusely because you are just not yet used to BTS. You will have to adjust some things sure, but you will find things get much better and BTS is much better if you give it some time.

Anyway, not microing early cities is very suboptimal, so I recommend you get away from that playstyle altogether, especially if you want to get better at the game. If not then why care if it is working 3 commerce seafood tiles over 1C non-riverside cottage. The seafood tile is a far far far far better tile anyway for many resasons.

it's going to be the towns that win the game.

Actually, no, towns are not the key to this game. As my point above, you have A LOT to learn about this game. (I'm not saying that to be critical or flippant, it is just the truth based on looking at the game and some of your comments)

......I was expecting there to be a more obvious GP city choice..... (nice river with some floodplanes or something)....but like I said, Prince, so no big deal.

um...how about Nidaros. A GP city does not preclude you from getting your first couple of GS's quickly.

Floodplains...last place I look for a GP farm unless it's all I have. Nidaros is fine. Lodoros would have been great with fish.

No big deal....Great People are always a big deal no matter the level unless I'm going straight conquest on low level HOF/GOTMs with no Astro in which case I would finish the game in the BCs and get must gold from cities.

The entire reason I'm grabbing the luxury resources is to try to get the economy going; the happy cap is pretty much ruining me. Sure, the cities are expensive, but the extra two workers per city will definitely pay for it.

The 1 or 2 happies is FAR from your problem here, the extra 2 cities on the other hand are.

Sure, Currency would really help my economy, but so would a ton of the other basic techs

Wow! Like I said, you have a LOT to learn about this game. Yeah, in semi/iso - iso games, you sometimes can shun currency for Optics/Astro beeline, but if you are going to expand like that you need something to offset it.

(And Currency is the most important tech in the game by the way)

The bottom line is that unless the automation is going to work cottages... isn't going to work in BtS.... makes this no longer the right way to do things?

And the problem here is you are making your like/dislike of or willingness to move to BTS based on some very minor little problem(...that is only a "perceived" problem) based on what is actually a very sub-optimal way to play the game....