What's the deal with boats and Settlers?

[Sherlock]

I keep getting stuck on medium to large islands and it seems to take forever to get decent boats.

What's the tech/ship that lets you put a Settler out there?

Any suggestions/tips on getting technology that let's you use ships? Anything that's not a work-boat and can't even leave your cultural borders really isn't worth bothering with (I'd say).

All comment and suggestions welcome.

 

[mechaerik]

Galleys, Carracks (portugese uu) Galleons, and Transports can carry settlers.

Galleys can only go into coast, like the Work Boat, but can go anywhere in your cultural boundary. Galleons and Transports are ocean going. Problem is, unless there's alot of unclaimed islands, by the time you can go any distance, the land will be claimed, and any cities you get will likely be expensive (colonial and distance maintenance costs).

 

[naterator]

You can't build boats if you're land locked. Now in coastal cities...

Sailing allows galleys, coastal tiles only.

Optics allows caravels, for exploration only (missionaries, great people, spies, and explorers, not military, workers, or settlers)

Astronomy allows Galleons, finally full access other continents.

Combustion allows transports, top of the line civ troop ships.

F12 is the civilopedia, for simple unit or tech questions, it's alot quicker than waiting for answers here. Also at the top of this page, the "Civilization IV" drop down menu has lots of info too.

 

[Shafi]

Astronomy is a long way down the tech tree and on most maps by the time you get there all the land on the new continents you find will be inhabited, so it wont be useful to load galleons with settlers and set sail looking for new land.

However on Earth maps, The americas + australia can be settled in this way.

Also if you are playing as the portugese, their UU the "Carrack" which replaces the Caravel can transport settlers and is available with Optics.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

It's rather joyless that they don't let the Caravel carry settlers imo. How utterly mundane.

As for your question some people like to "beeline" their research towards Astronomy to escpae their tropical paradise as fast as possible. An advanced player may use scientist great persons to knock down technologies in 1 turn swoops.

 

[naterator]

Astronomy is a long way down the tech tree and on most maps by the time you get there all the land on the new continents you find will be inhabited, so it wont be useful to load galleons with settlers and set sail looking for new land.

Of course that depends on the map. And blindly sending galleons out into the blackness with settlers and just crossing your fingers that they'll hit unoccupied land is of course not the plan. Ideally you should scout first with caravels, that way you know whether to send single galleons with Settler>Longbow>Worker or Stacks loaded with military. Settling unoccupied land (if any) is easy enough with carracks, but for military expansion the extra cargo spot of the galleon really speeds things up (dutch east indiamen are great for intercontinental war with their 4th cargo space.

In my last game i found a barbarian island with cities like "Washington" and "New York" (thank you vedic aryans) to be conquered. This was the game that made me like east indiamen as a very situational but useful unit.

Also remember that it's usually best to expand on your own continent. Colonial maintainance is expensive and you'll need a larger standing army with 2 unconnected empires to defend. Also you won't have to wait for any specific techs just to be able to get your troops to the war. If you still want to go intercontinental, move your palace someplace central on your main landmass and save your forbidden palace for the new world.

 

[Sherlock]

You can't build boats if you're land locked. Now in coastal cities...

Sailing allows galleys, coastal tiles only.

Optics allows caravels, for exploration only (missionaries, great people, spies, and explorers, not military, workers, or settlers)

Astronomy allows Galleons, finally full access other continents.

Combustion allows transports, top of the line civ troop ships.

F12 is the civilopedia, for simple unit or tech questions, it's alot quicker than waiting for answers here. Also at the top of this page, the "Civilization IV" drop down menu has lots of info too.

Optics to explore (Caravels) and Astronomy to settle (Galleons). Got it. Thanks. Although it sounds like the 'settle on another continent over the ocean' is a tough strategy. I have four cities and share the continent I'm on with two other civs. There are three 'undiscovered' civs. I'm afraid when I finally do discover them they'll be huge.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Maybe there's an opportunity to take out one of your neighbors?

 

[japheree]

It's rather joyless that they don't let the Caravel carry settlers imo. How utterly mundane.

Having seen replica ships of the period like the Matthew I'm not sure I blame those settlers refusing to board!

 

[japheree]

Optics to explore (Caravels) and Astronomy to settle (Galleons). Got it. Thanks. Although it sounds like the 'settle on another continent over the ocean' is a tough strategy. I have four cities and share the continent I'm on with two other civs. There are three 'undiscovered' civs. I'm afraid when I finally do discover them they'll be huge.

You can try on mas like 'Terra', although I have found that the Portuguese UU doesn't sync well with that stage of my ability to maintain a pan-continental empire so I usually bleed gold to the point of not bothering.

 

[mechaerik]

Yeah, I usually wait till Communism and SP until I start intercontinental wars of conquest.

 

[capnvonbaron]

A few times I've successfully waged intercontinental war by taking a half dozen cities from the enemy (or enemies) and granting them all independence. It works in 3.17 anyways. Keep a city or two so you can upgrade units, and gift any newly conquered cities to your colony holder.

This allows a couple things. Each of the cities of the new colony get two new defenders equivalent to the best you can produce, so you can pull out your defenders to continue on offensive. Also, now you don't pay maintenence in those cities OR suffer WW if those cities get taken back by the enemy

 

[Powerslave]

It's frequently not even worth conquering people on a different continent. Of course, if you're going for a domination or conquest victory, then it makes perfect sense to collect vassals and/or colonies. Otherwise, you're better off just staying on your home continent and going for a more peaceful victory.

As long as I'm number one in land, GNP, and production, I'm happy. Conquering the world is a conceit that I've successfully purged from my system (I think).

 

[mechaerik]

It's frequently not even worth conquering people on a different continent. Of course, if you're going for a domination or conquest victory, then it makes perfect sense to collect vassals and/or colonies. Otherwise, you're better off just staying on your home continent and going for a more peaceful victory.

But all those juicy cities! All those cities with wonders, and those holy cities .

As long as I'm number one in land, GNP, and production, I'm happy. Conquering the world is a conceit that I've successfully purged from my system (I think).

Death before pacifism (not the civic, the philosophy)!!!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Optics to explore (Caravels) and Astronomy to settle (Galleons). Got it. Thanks. Although it sounds like the 'settle on another continent over the ocean' is a tough strategy. I have four cities and share the continent I'm on with two other civs. There are three 'undiscovered' civs. I'm afraid when I finally do discover them they'll be huge.

Unless you're playing deity, it's hard to believe that you can get locked to 4 cities if expanding properly. Even on deity it's not incredibly likely that you'll get shut to 4 cities though it can happen.

For most difficulties on standard map size you can get 8-10 peacefully without too much trouble and I suggest shooting for that.

 

[mechaerik]

Well, if you have a sufficiently small continent, you can get locked to 4 cities. A while ago I started on a tiny continent, I could barely squeeze five cities on it. It was on a Standard map too.


EDIT: It would have been worse for me, if I hadn't taken out Shaka early.

 

[naterator]

Optics to explore (Caravels) and Astronomy to settle (Galleons). Got it. Thanks. Although it sounds like the 'settle on another continent over the ocean' is a tough strategy. I have four cities and share the continent I'm on with two other civs. There are three 'undiscovered' civs. I'm afraid when I finally do discover them they'll be huge.

It's tougher, but as long as you're not trying to push your way up the difficulty ladder at the same time it can be fun too. There's alot of opportunities for error, but if you set up shop on multiple landmasses early enough it can make the late game pretty fun. Especially on a continents map, having some cities already established on the other side of the ocean that can have culture, production, and airports before the big war starts can make things sooo nice.

 

[3 EMS]

One map script produces uninhabited continants or large islands. On standard setting. I forget exactly which one. Perhaps one of the continant ones. These landmasses will usually have barb cities on them by the time you can get to them. It does provide a measure of race to settle the new land.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

There is also the Perfect World 2 script that has a similiar feature, along with other considerations.