[BTS] Who's the best leader for learning the game and why?

[unas876]

For a new player? Any leader with the spiritual trait, without any doubt. The (I thought obvious) reason is that new players don't know which governments are better for each situation, which leaders care more about shared religions or how to time golden ages to avoid anarchy, so the spiritual trait helps a lot to experiment with civics and diplomacy learning.

I agree so much with this. Imo the most important thing for struggling players that don't have a defined idea on what exact civics they wanna use at what phase in the game, plus the religious diplomacy, which is huge in Civ IV. Then getting the great people for golden ages (particularly important for late game civic switches, as they can sometimes take multiple turns) to avoid the anarchy, optimizing how you combine that with caste system and all that: it can get quite complex and executing it properly often means planning ahead a lot.
I'm a casual Immortal player and I have devoured AbsoluteZeros videos over the last years, yet even for me that aspect of the game is very hard.
Hence I suggest playing SPI until you get decent at it, or if you don't want that, planning very early what type of game you're going to play (eg wonder economy, cottage economy, early warfare or beelining a certain tech and then going to war,...). But with SPI you really got the chance to actually try different stuff without getting punished so hard for it. It will help you build an understanding about civics and diplomacy, which will massively improve your game.

When you start playing on the higher levels I suggest playing Civs with a good early UU, as barb defense depending on the type of map can get a lot harder. That would mean for example the resourceless early melee units (dog soldiers, jaguars etc) or skirmishers etc. Researching the BW, IW or AH just to realize that you don't have the required strategic resources can be a problem, particularly when you get more and earlier barbs than what you're used to.

If you haven't really mastered the whip yet, a consideration is playing Montezuma, as his UB will make mistakes this much more forgiving.

I could go on and on. Theres really a lot of arguments for many different approaches.

 

[pandamancer]

I would suggest the following leaders:
1) washington - decent starting tech, average trait, late uu and ub (for practicing empire management)
2) hammurabi - good starting tech, below average trait, weak uu and ub (for practicing always war)
3) khmer - decent starting tech, above average trait, lackluster uu and ub (for practicing space race)
4) native america - decent starting tech, below average trait, strong ub and lackluster uu (for practicing unit promotion and upgrades)
5) saladin - below average starting tech, below average trait, weak uu and decent ub (practicing ap cheese)
6) WvO - decent starting tech, above average trait, situational uu and ub (for practicing OCC or no tech trading)

*7) tokugawa - subpar starting tech, weak trait, situational uu and ub (for mastery of the difficulty level)

 

[escream]

An important thing to learn in the game is flexiblity: to your traits, to your map, to your unique unit, to your unique building, to your neighbors,...
So I would argue like someone else did above that randomizing the leader is the best way to go to learn the game! And try to understand what's going on and making the best out of it! Recognizing how a leader trait helped you is also a valuable lesson!
I can still get behind two reasonings though: if the randomizer picks a financial leader you can decide to restart because it is true that this trait forces you the least to explore specific game mechanics (the same could be said to a lesser degree of creative). Also, I do think spiritual is a good trait to learn because it allows you to experiment with a lot of different things in a single game.
But don't avoid a trait because it's supposed to be overpowered, because if the only thing you want is a harder game just move up in difficulty don't try only the worst traits (for example protective is weak, but while it is probably a better learning experience than say financial it is still limited in what you're going to learn to master in this specific trait)

 

[Lazarus_Cato]

@Lazarus_Cato sorry I meant Prince. Well I personally never played a Monarch game, struggled on Noble at the beggining, then went Prince and didn't find much difference. Then went to straight to Emperor and Immortal a bit later. Took me much more time to master Immortal though. The thing is that, when you master the game basic mechanics, plan a little and play carefully, then you can go up in difficulty real quick.

Well I just won an AP diplo game in 1100AD with Tokugawa. So I guess I'll try Prince - I'm pretty stoked with that result, and I learned alot about diplo. I wish I'd taken notes down of what I did each turn, because it would of been cool to do a write up of the game to share with you guys... Do you think that's a good date? It could of been earlier if I had teched theo sooner, I didn't found any religions but 4 AI (at the time were Hindu), I converted and reverted the rest after chopping out the AP and gifted tech to get everyone bar 1 to friendly and pleased.

What was your reasoning behind going straight to Emperor?

Also, one more piece of advice to improve your game is not focusing too much on warmongering. At the time when I struggled on Noble I always had my mind set on war and on whoever I was gonna attack or was gonna attack me, and it turned my attention off economy. I believe that the best way to improve your game is to play peaceful games until lib, then go to conquer the world with Renaissance units. I'm saying that because this kind of strategy covers every aspect of the game except early war. The point I'm trying to make is that if you keep going to war early, you won't have trouble winning Noble games, but you won't be able to use the same strategies on higher difficulties (the handicap against the AI makes early wars much harder, while mid-game wars are only slightly harder). Also, when you go up in difficulty the maintenance costs increase, so early warmongering hurts your economy. Therefore to be able to recover from an early war you need some micro-management skills that you basically learn while playing lib races. Some might disagree with me on that point, that's just my 2 cents ^^

Yeah, I picked this up from watching AZ's let's plays. A question: on cottaging... I noticed I have a tendency to cottage almost all my 2 food tiles, is this optimal or should I be going farms - my thinking is that as long as the city is growing it's better to cottage... What are your thoughts?

Now, a simple way to rate your games (although it won't tell you what you did wrong) is to set tech milestones. While the tech pace/rate varies with every game, some dates remain relevant. For example, if you attack with Horse Archers in 200AD, then there was most likely something seriously wrong in your early game play. Same thing, not being able to get cannons before 1500AD (which was my case a few months ago), means you don't manage your economy properly, if you can get them by 800AD then you're a pretty good player.
All these dates are for normal speed of course. On marathon everything comes much quicker.

Noted. Is there a resource for some of these tech milestones, also Wonder build dates... I know these would vary by difficulty.

About expansion :
When you aren't in any hurry to expand (no one threatening to grab all your land), good dates are 2 cities by 2400BC, 4-5 cities by 1000BC then expand slowly to grab the remaining land. If you're not planning to go to war before lib, it is recommended that you get at least six strong cities.

Well I had 4 good cities by 1000BC plus 2 dodgy cities by 840AD... I was pretty boxed in though... I'll keep this in mind. Also, is it worth settling cities just for the sake of it (even if they are on terrible land as long as they are maintainence neutral or better? I'm guessing yes.

Edit : @ArchGhost : I'm sorry but I've got to disagree with you about Toku. The only way I can see him being an above average leader is for an early axe (or maybe sword) rush. Gunpowder units will be reached faster with any other leader (except Charly or maybe Boudica), under the same conditions, than with Toku, allowing you to attack with a bigger stack at the same date. And a 20 standard rifles stack is stronger than a 20 toku rifles stack.
I like Toku as a leader for practice not only because of his "neutral" traits, but because his starting tech combo isn't too bad (for example starting with mysticism and hunting doesen't help improve your game).

Yeah I didn't mind playing as Toku, from what I've read I think I will use him as the test each time I plan on moving up a difficulty.

The incas imo is the easy mode, no matter what difficulty you play, he is absurdly good at early-mid-late game, it can conquer early with warriors, his granarys act like he is an creative leader(+2 culture/turn), and he is financial + industroius.
he is good at war/expand/tech/wb.

I'll keep that in mind, I'll probably play my first Monarch game with Hyuana then.

Agree with Pedo above on the need to focus on the economy. As you move up in difficulty, it becomes more challenging to keep a good economy, especially after early warfare, and you need to recover. A couple benchmarks here is to get 200 by 1AD on normal speed. Ideally more, like 300, but that's more tricky and depends a good deal on getting CS and Buro by 1AD. Not always possible.

The closest save I could get from the auto save were at 840AD where I had 234 . I had 243 at 1080AD both with 4 good cities and 2 dodgy ones... Are you able to say from that whether this is okay (I know uploading a save would be better but just curious)... I'll keep this in mind.

I agree so much with this. Imo the most important thing for struggling players that don't have a defined idea on what exact civics they wanna use at what phase in the game, plus the religious diplomacy, which is huge in Civ IV. Then getting the great people for golden ages (particularly important for late game civic switches, as they can sometimes take multiple turns) to avoid the anarchy, optimizing how you combine that with caste system and all that: it can get quite complex and executing it properly often means planning ahead a lot.
I'm a casual Immortal player and I have devoured AbsoluteZeros videos over the last years, yet even for me that aspect of the game is very hard.
Hence I suggest playing SPI until you get decent at it, or if you don't want that, planning very early what type of game you're going to play (eg wonder economy, cottage economy, early warfare or beelining a certain tech and then going to war,...). But with SPI you really got the chance to actually try different stuff without getting punished so hard for it. It will help you build an understanding about civics and diplomacy, which will massively improve your game.

When you start playing on the higher levels I suggest playing Civs with a good early UU, as barb defense depending on the type of map can get a lot harder. That would mean for example the resourceless early melee units (dog soldiers, jaguars etc) or skirmishers etc. Researching the BW, IW or AH just to realize that you don't have the required strategic resources can be a problem, particularly when you get more and earlier barbs than what you're used to.

If you haven't really mastered the whip yet, a consideration is playing Montezuma, as his UB will make mistakes this much more forgiving.

I could go on and on. Theres really a lot of arguments for many different approaches.

I see what you're saying, but I don't want to go easy on myself too much, maybe when I'm testing the waters on Monarch I will take this approach.

I would suggest the following leaders:
1) washington - decent starting tech, average trait, late uu and ub (for practicing empire management)
2) hammurabi - good starting tech, below average trait, weak uu and ub (for practicing always war)
3) khmer - decent starting tech, above average trait, lackluster uu and ub (for practicing space race)
4) native america - decent starting tech, below average trait, strong ub and lackluster uu (for practicing unit promotion and upgrades)
5) saladin - below average starting tech, below average trait, weak uu and decent ub (practicing ap cheese)

*6) tokugawa - subpar starting tech, weak trait, situational uu and ub (for mastery of the difficulty level)

Another great list, thank you I will come back to this too....
Also, I guess I just mastered Noble then, with an 1100AD AP diplo win as Tokugawa - do you think this is a good date...

An important thing to learn in the game is flexiblity: to your traits, to your map, to your unique unit, to your unique building, to your neighbors,...
So I would argue like someone else did above that randomizing the leader is the best way to go to learn the game! And try to understand what's going on and making the best out of it! Recognizing how a leader trait helped you is also a valuable lesson!
I can still get behind two reasonings though: if the randomizer picks a financial leader you can decide to restart because it is true that this trait forces you the least to explore specific game mechanics (the same could be said to a lesser degree of creative). Also, I do think spiritual is a good trait to learn because it allows you to experiment with a lot of different things in a single game.
But don't avoid a trait because it's supposed to be overpowered, because if the only thing you want is a harder game just move up in difficulty don't try only the worst traits (for example protective is weak, but while it is probably a better learning experience than say financial it is still limited in what you're going to learn to master in this specific trait)

Yeah, I'm planning on randomising the game now that according to some I have mastered Noble (1100AD AP diplo win with Tokugawa)... I'm going to go up to Prince and play a few games whilst still probably avoiding creative, financial, philosophical and spiritual for now.

 

[lymond]

Hey LC - sorry to burst your bubble, but as I mentioned AP is a very gimmicky VC. (we call it AP cheese) It's actually not hard to win AP in the BCs on Pangaea even on higher difficulties. I congratulate you on your win regardless.

So really, I recommend not thinking so much about "mastering" Noble, rather than mastering the basics as I've discussed earlier. The victories will come regardless of levels. Most of this discussion has been about ..well..the best leader to learn with (although in one sense it has become a "who is the best leader' thread again)

We've still not seen you play. We've not seen saves or screenshots, so no one can really comment on what you know and what you are learning..or give you direct advice. No one knows if you are mastering anything at all, or let's say getting comfortable. ('mastering" is probably not the best term to use, and I'm guilty of that earlier. Heck..I'm still learn things today after years of playing)

As for cottages, per above, it comes down to "city specialization". Just cottaging every tile is likely highly suboptimal. You have to ask yourself what the purpose of that city is. You don't need cottages in every city. Some cities are cottage cities (river cities, bureau capital), some are production cities, some focus on food/great people. Production cities need more food to work more hammers...simple as that.

But also note that if a worker is cottaging a tile that really should not be cottaged in a city that should not have cottages, that worker is wasting worker turns. Always analyze your situation on and ask yourself 'what is best for now".

 

[Lazarus_Cato]

And of course since I started a new game I lost all my autosaves (I should have known)... This was my first 100 turns... (I know I'm derailing the thread, apologies)

Spoiler screen shot :

From here I whipped the 2 settlers and settled them where I have marked. Qin had another city to his north by the time I got up there. There was only room for the 1 city to the north because Mansa and Surya were to north there. Not long after getting theology I converted to hinduism but Surya and Cyrus converted to Christianity. I built a few more workers and switched into HR and OR then started pumping out hindu missionaries whilst I chopped out the AP and hooked up the banana, wine and silk. I can't remember what I used the GS for, I think it was paper. I put cottages on virtually all the 2 food tiles except in the southern city which I farmed everything. As you can see from the save I had quite a tech lead, a couple of the AI (I don't remember who) made tech demands which I acceded to and that made them friendly. In the end I think I pumped out 10-12 missionaries and was able to trade techs to get Surya, Cyrus and Fred to convert to hinduism, Surya I had to do this twice. Someone demanded I stop trading with Lincoln which I agreed to and then reneged on asap which made him cautious but I didn't care about the diplo hit with him because he seemed pretty set on buddhism. After theology I think I beelined for lib and got nationalism. After a couple of AP resolutions to stop trading with Lincoln (which I didn't choose to do) I got the chance for the diplo win. And that was pretty much it.

Hey LC - sorry to burst your bubble, but as I mentioned AP is a very gimmicky VC. (we call it AP cheese) It's actually not hard to win AP in the BCs on Pangaea even on higher difficulties. I congratulate you on your win regardless.

Aw man, I thought you meant it was hard to get... lol. Oh well, I'm still moving onto Prince. I think if I had chosen to go straight for the AP victory from the start I could of got it alot quicker - but I played it more like a normal game. I didn't whip too much either as I wanted the pop for the votes.

So really, I recommend not thinking so much about "mastering" Noble, rather than mastering the basics as I've discussed earlier. The victories will come regardless of levels. Most of this discussion has been about ..well..the best leader to learn with (although in one sense it has become a "who is the best leader' thread again)

I'm playing NC1 at the moment, I'd be honoured if you or someone else would play along with me this time. I know I said I wouldn't play phi or fin but I wanted to try a forum game and this seemed cool.

We've still not seen you play. We've not seen saves or screenshots, so no one can really comment on what you know and what you are learning..or give you direct advice. No one knows if you are mastering anything at all, or let's say getting comfortable. ('mastering" is probably not the best term to use, and I'm guilty of that earlier. Heck..I'm still learn things today after years of playing)

I've uploaded the 350BC save (that's all I have) unfortunately because I lost my autosaves , you'll need BAT 4.1.

As for cottages, per above, it comes down to "city specialization". Just cottaging every tile is likely highly suboptimal. You have to ask yourself what the purpose of that city is. You don't need cottages in every city. Some cities are cottage cities (river cities, bureau capital), some are production cities, some focus on food/great people. Production cities need more food to work more hammers...simple as that.

But also note that if a worker is cottaging a tile that really should not be cottaged in a city that should not have cottages, that worker is wasting worker turns. Always analyze your situation on and ask yourself 'what is best for now".

Noted.

Based on my save, screen shot and everything I've said, what would you have done differently. Also should I have founded more cities earlier than this.

 

[diegobueno]

Spoiler screen shot :

satsuma has 8 bad tiles, 3 desert, 5 sea without lh = only 1 food/tile.
and the city you want to settle on the south has no resources, and its mostly tundra+seafood.
pls a pro deity player correct me if i'm wrong

 

[Lazarus_Cato]

satsuma has 8 bad tiles, 3 desert, 5 sea without lh = only 1 food/tile.
and the city you want to settle on the south has no resources, and its mostly tundra+seafood.
pls a pro deity player correct me if i'm wrong

My thinking with Satsuma was I wanted as many grassland for cottages as possible. In your opinion would it of been better to settle 1NW and build a lighthouse... Yeah I just did some calculations and I would of got more commerce and food with a lighthouse even if I cottaged everything.
The southern city I had to settle as it was the only other spot left, besides maybe 1 more west of the mountain north of the sheep and 1 north of the silk. In the end the southern city was commerce+ so it was okay... I really don't know what else I could of done except pump out more settlers earlier and see what I could of grabbed.

 

[Snowbird]

satsuma has 8 bad tiles, 3 desert, 5 sea without lh = only 1 food/tile.
and the city you want to settle on the south has no resources, and its mostly tundra+seafood.
pls a pro deity player correct me if i'm wrong

Not a pro diety player, but you are wrong. Counting bad tiles is not correct way, you should count resources and food surplus, worst case scenario just keep two whipping food surplus - where is always something like garison units, missionaries, spies, executives. Satsuma has food resource in cows and future banana, overall enough for passable city. (It would be better being coastal,or maybe grabing marble and silk tile instead of banana).I see nothing wrong on tundra seafood (in theory, I do not plan installing mod just to peek into the save )


+1 for studying expansion.

 

[Pangaea]

The closest save I could get from the auto save were at 840AD where I had 234 . I had 243 at 1080AD both with 4 good cities and 2 dodgy ones... Are you able to say from that whether this is okay (I know uploading a save would be better but just curious)... I'll keep this in mind.

Can't really say much categorically, because every game differs so much. Sometimes you need to wage war early to break out from a limited position, meaning you focus on military and whipping, and less on building up an economy (it's a good exercise in recovery though), and at other times you can expand to 10+ cities by 1AD and pump through the techs. Maybe you have some nice rivers as well - prime land for cottages.

200 by 1AD is a good target, but it's by no means an easy feat. It's nice to have some targets to measure yourself against, however, and this might be a good one for working on your economy and gradually improving.

* * *

You mention cottaging elsewhere in the post: I wouldn't cottage everything green. You ought to find out what each city needs, and build those improvements. What will the role of city X be? Commerce? Military/hammers? Great people farm? A mixed bag?

Due to the strength of Bureaucracy, I generally cottage all green riverside tiles in the capital - food permitting. In the capital, I may also cottage non-riverside green tiles, but only in rare cases, and it's not the norm. In other cities, I just cottage riverside tiles, and not always. It depends on what the city needs. Are there some green mines but the city lacks food? Then you need farms.

After Civil Service, farms can also irrigate water, which means you can turn "dry corn/wheat/rice" wet, which in practice means they gain one extra .

If you haven't checked it out yet, you could take a look at this thread, which goes through City Specialisation.
As you will see, how you shape a city isn't limited to just how you improve the tiles, but what buildings you construct. No point with a barracks if a city won't be producing (many) military units, and little point with a market if the city will mainly be producing military units. Markets are generally quite crap.

 

[Pedro78]

@Lazarus_Cato
Most of the questions you asked me have already been answered by other people, I only have a few things to point out.

First, I would say you shouldn't focus too much on difficulty. Once you "master" the game basics you should get easy wins on emperor pretty quickly. The thing is that on difficulties up to emperor (some would even say on immortal), you can basically outtech the AI pretty easily as soon as you master the basics, as long as you don't make too many "stupid" mistakes. For example, on emperor the AI most of the time won't get rifling until 1400AD, which means you can basically roll over the whole world with Cuirassiers, or even trebs + maces as long as you get these before 1000AD / 500AD.

At the time where I used to play on emperor, I used to automate workers as soon as I had improved the resources, and never cottaged the capital. I just rushed for litterature, great library + national Epic in capital, possibly MoM and bulbed/GA'd my way to cuirs. I had a cuir army by 1000-1100AD and rolled over 2-3 AIs without much trouble and close to 0 planning. Then I moved up to Immortal and got my ass kicked every single time as this "strategy" didn't work anymore. There still was an enormous amount of very basic civ4 concepts I didn't master at the time. Thus, most of my civ4 learning process was made playing immortal games.

The point I'm trying to make is that you should probably post an Emperor game on the forums (Immortal is definitely to hard to start with), and play along with the advice of more experienced players. The logic behind that is that while playing on Noble/Prince you can manage your economy completely wrong and still pull out an easy win. Playing on a higher difficulty straight off might not give you straight wins, but will help you much more with the more difficulty-tied game mechanics (REx, Diplo, Tech trades...).

About AZ's let's plays : Not only are they very entertaining to watch, but most of my civ knowledge comes from there. If you are looking for milestones, you might just take the average dates he gets in his pangaea lib games, these are a good medium term goal to aim at.

About Huayna : He is waay too cheesy to be a good leader to learn the game. Unless you want to achieve some crazy record (BC space? ^^), I wouldn't recommend playing with him. Many even find him boring to play, as, even on deity, you basically only have to quechua-rush your closest neighbour and the game is usually won from there...

I would however agree that playing a Spi leader is a good way to mess around with civics and see how they affect your economy. To that regard, I think Saladin is a good leader for practice (Pro is a "neutral" trait)

 

[elmurcis]

This is important - now (after years) I love playing loooooong games where all 20 tiles "can get action" later (real game usually only starts ~1000 AD when everybody got Astro.. with no-tech trading its when global wars just start ) but..
its not effective way to play this game when its normal size and "standard" settings... and everything is possible early and there just is not enough resources for size 10+ cities. Even size 4 with 1 good food resource can give enough for empire.

 

[lymond]

Hey LC..where there is two ways to look at the game you posted above:

1) First way is that you went for AP victory, which as mentioned is not only a gimmicky VC, but also really something that has its own path to victory. So if you are going for AP from the start, you focus things toward that the AP victory. What that means that a) you usually only need a few cities..in fact, 4 is fine b) I'd usually want to Oracle>Theo especially with marble nearby c) and with marble nearby I'd likely settle even a crap city to get it online asap (noting that other than a strong developed cap and maybe secondary city or two, the cities beyond the first couple don't matter all that much.

AP is about getting to Theo asap, switching to whatever the AP religion will be to build AP as fast as you can. Managing diplo as best as possible (there's some tricks around this. And spreading the AP religion to all civs so that the "ap victory" vote will take place, while managing the balance of AP votes so that not only you win the vote, but rather you have the appropriate ratio of votes so that winning is possible.

Generally, you either try to manage diplo in such a way (open borders, trading resources and techs, religion/no religion, etc) so that at least a couple of folks vote for you, but you can almost win without it. A little trick about AP is that you can switch to the AP religion on the turn of the vote without the diplo impact on that turn (in other words the vote will happen based on the relations prior to that switch). If you've not already realized this, your AP influence is increased significantly (i think doubled) by being in the AP religion.

So, AP is really a very different type of game (although you can of course try to use AP as a fallback VC later in the game ..at least before Mass Media). Just like Culture Victory is a very different type of game. Of course, certain basic mechanics must be utilized and are useful, but different strategies are usually employed.

If one really pushes for early Theo and fast AP build (Ramses is a very good leader for this), combined with judicious spreading in the meantime, you can achieve very early AP dates. Also, note that fairly early you can settle/infect cities real fast nearby - just crapppy ones, and gift them to far away AIs to get them as members quickly.

2) The other way to look at your game is what we've been talking about before..just simple learning of game mechanics. So here are thoughts in that vein (not thinking AP here):

a) I see 3 fairly decent cities (cap and adjacent two). Osaka and Toku could have been settled a tile closer each way to Kyoto, but the good thing here is you settled next to food. Regardless, not bad cities really. I mean Tokyo is not winning awards..but hey..it's really all you got there. Satsuma is good in one sense that you settled next to food. However, it is quite far away and as others mentioned it is an awkward settle with all that unusable coast and desert. Ofc, your intent here was "green" for cottages, which in this case is a bad idea. I might have settled this closer again to Kyoto..maybe 1SW of cows, which brings the marble online eventually. Nanners can go to some other city later and all that is jungle up there anyway, which takes IW and effort.

b) Next, and important concept is the rate of expansion, which in your game is quite slow. (as mentioned, you were going for AP so really did not need a lot of cities but where looking at this neutrally now) In a traditional game, you really need to expand quite a bit faster here. However, this land is pretty sucky outside your immediate area. You don't need to just settle a city for the sake of settling one. For instance, that spot directly south is complete crap, and I'd probably ignore it completely in most games, or if going late and corporation, something like Sushi/Mining could make it feasible if pushing for high scores. ( I mean think about, what is that tundra city with no resources doing for you right now..nothing but increasing your maintenance)

c) So what is the answer then? What do you do when you are in ..what appears to be..close proximity to AI capitals, and good land and resources are at a premium? The answer is you go kill peoples! ha. Yes, don't build settlers, build armies. (again, that was not your goal but that is how I would play it). And the best solution here is horsies. Chariots do fine on this level, but on higher levels I'd probably be pushing for fast Horse Archers, which are very effective early units for conquering. Just straight up Horse Archer armies using speed and tactics to wipe out the enemies and get more stuff for you. Even 3 cities is fine for this approach using slavery and chops to get out a fast army.

(and no, if Satsuma was settled coastal you do not need a LH) Keep in mind that as long as you settle correctly (food/strats), cities don't need to be very large outside your cap early on. Main thing you want in secondary cities is food and production. You want "growth potential" since "food is production", but that does not mean cities need to grow large early on....they need to grow as fast so you can turn that growth into production (whip)

And again, I repeat. I would focus less on "mastering" a difficulty level. Go to Prince or even Monarch if you wish. (Prince is not a huge bump, but Monarch does offer some different things like AIs starting with archery now).

Heck, I recommend not even thinking about Victory Conditions either. Run a game with us and focus on where you need to be at ..say..1AD. Let us get you there and then you can take that game wherever you choose.

 

[Dewii]

Second the above. Consider the following premise: maximize the number of tiles worked. Taken to the extreme, if you insist on every city having its own BFC for itself you are not working every tile until those cities are size 20! That's incredibly inefficient.

In addition it's impossible to settle cities in such a way that all tiles in your empire fall within some cities' BFC and you have no overlap. Either you have some overlap or you have tiles that no city can work.

 

[diegobueno]

You want "growth potential" since "food is production", but that does not mean cities need to grow large early on....they need to grow as fast so you can turn that growth into production (whip)

can you explain the efficient way to whip pls? i know the bassics but and explain never hurts

 

[Pangaea]

1. Whip
2. Repeat

 

[lymond]

1. Whip
2. Repeat

ninja'd

 

[elmurcis]

Improve food, grow city, whip granary... grow city, whip (something else), grow.. grow.. grow.... get miltary advantage, plan attack "needs"... whip.. whip...whip (for war 3x whip outside Capital is very welcome for short burst, capital can do 2x whip ).. after war switch to Caste and easy grow back when time for late game war (Curraissers.. Cannons.. Stuff...), back to Slavery and repeat (whip..whip..whip..) to win (atleast war if not game)

 

[ArchGhost]

can you explain the efficient way to whip pls? i know the bassics but and explain never hurts

Some things I know about it from my limited experiences:

- Don't whip every turn, in general. There are a lot of exceptions (there are many complex reasons you would whip as fast as you could like emergency war units, or multiple builds in a turn to cut the pop of an unhappy/just captured city) but you usually want to put at least a few turns between whips to keep anger from stacking so uniformly, and without some turns to work tiles the city won't grow back or put much into the granary (if it has one). Leaving at least a turn between whips to work the next build removes the 50% penalty on the rush cost, so it will cheapen the next project as well for more overflow/less pop whipped away.

- Granaries are pretty much required to get the most out of your whips. You don't NEED them to whip, especially in high food locations, but they help the city recover faster which makes them very helpful for long term sustained whipping. If you have the happiness to spare, granary cities in high spots can be very productive over a set amount of turns. You'd be surprised how much of an army you can whip up in 10-20 turns with only 4 or so. I don't know any of the maths behind it but just having the granary (and some food built up into it) increases the efficiency of the the food >>> hammer conversion, since you can grow pops back with less food. It's even possible to whip some population off and have enough in storage to grow back 1 pop immediately, and a (filled) granary increases the threshold at which this is possible.

- 2 pop whips are really nice because a city with a granary in a decent spot can generally grow back to starting size by the time the 10 turns of anger is up, if you wanted to wait. Also, 2 pop whips make several low cost builds quite handy for generating overflow you can put towards anything you want. Without a forge (1 pop = 30 hammers), you can put 4 or less hammers into an axe/spear (35h), whip it, and get up to 29 hammers of overflow towards anything (notably wonders, as overflow hammers don't get the building penalty IIRC). After a forge (1 pop = 37.5 hammers), explorers (40h, needs compass) or if you have their tech, catapults/longbows/triremes (50h) are nice for it depending on how many hammers your city puts out in the one turn of work to eliminate the 50% penalty on the whip. Catapults are popular from what I understand because they help you wage an early war, so the whip isn't wasted as much as with a bunch of non-transporting boats or defensive units.

- the best way to make a unhappy city productive is to simply whip away the unhappy citizens. You turn multiple population that does nothing except cost you more in civic upkeep costs into hammers, and the city grows back to do it again or to take advantage of more happiness later. Whip as much population at once to get the most hammers for your 10 turns of unhappiness. This is a common tactic with captured cities fresh out of revolt, as if they are choked by enemy culture and unhappiness (from lacking their luxuries, from wanting to join homeland, and because you inherit the city's whip anger, along with other situational factors) they would just starve down quickly anyway and it's a good way to immediately get something useful there (like a courthouse to cut maintenance costs on the now-distant city you own, or defensive units so you can move on with your attacking stack).

Also, I don't play with Spiritual a lot (I dislike the trait) but you can supposedly swap back and forth between Caste and Slavery as you wait to regrow/wait out for anger to bleed off. Doing so would mean you could run specialists or enhance your workshops while waiting.

If you play with BUG mod (or something that includes the enhanced advisor screens it gives) its pretty simple to use the domestic advisor tool to quickly manage your whipping. Just go to the City Detail tab of the domestic advisor and there you can sort through all your cities by how many pops will be whipped (if they can) on their current build, the current amount of anger turns, and "extra" hammers (which I have trouble figuring exactly what it's referencing; it seems to be final overflow after modifiers but it's always slightly off). No matter how many cities you have you can quickly glance at these useful tidbits to judge whipping the city, assuming you don't care what tiles they work/you understand how the governor will reassign them. I often use it when in war mode whipping bunches of cuirs or other mid or late game stuff when I have many cities as my computer doesn't handle scrolling through them all very well. I use the City Overview tab to only select those cities producing the units (so I don't whip the others until I've consciously resigned them to whipping out units), move over to the City Details tab and sort this selection by population to be whipped, then look through only the ones I want to whip (usually 2 or 3 pop) to make sure some of them aren't running like 70-80 turns of anger (which also tells you that they have at least -7 or 8 happiness at the same time) deselect any I don't want to and then crank the whip for all of them at once since the advisor will do that for all selected cities that can. I tend to play longer drawn out games because I'm not very good and I play on lower difficulty where I can get away with lots and lots of cities (habit from being introduced to the series by Civ: Rev ) and this tool is extremely helpful when you've got like 15, 20, even 30 or 40 cities as you continue to expand and/or capture. Even without that many, it's still very handy for being able to glance all your cities' whip statuses at once.

 

[Lazarus_Cato]

I'm sorry for my massive text walls but writing a reply to everyone helps me collate, think about and retain the information more.

It seems to me that one of your highest priorities right now would be to learn how to REX. If you're crammed in consider settling more tightly. You could've had several more cities in the space you have filled with just 4. If you had settled faster you probably could've grabbed way more land as well. Sure, some of them would have little food, but actually a city working just a couple of good tiles is an ok city. An iron mine and a fresh water farm is plenty for a satellite city. Your capital has decent food and you could've had a lot of towns or villages by now if you had settled some cities to help grow cottages. In your situation the capital should have every non-hill non-resource tile cottaged. Tile sharing is key. You should focus on getting 6 cities pretty fast (you need 6 cities for oxford). Long before 1AD.

6 cities pretty fast... is there a more specific date to aim for in this regard?

Not a pro diety player, but you are wrong. Counting bad tiles is not correct way, you should count resources and food surplus, worst case scenario just keep two whipping food surplus - where is always something like garison units, missionaries, spies, executives. Satsuma has food resource in cows and future banana, overall enough for passable city. (It would be better being coastal,or maybe grabing marble and silk tile instead of banana).I see nothing wrong on tundra seafood (in theory, I do not plan installing mod just to peek into the save )

+1 for studying expansion.

When you say keep two whipping food surplus, do you mean 2 cities or 2-pop whips?

Second the above. Consider the following premise: maximize the number of tiles worked. Taken to the extreme, if you insist on every city having its own BFC for itself you are not working every tile until those cities are size 20! That's incredibly inefficient.

In the long run you'd like to run specialists too. Which means that the actual number of tiles a city needs is not that high.

This helped me see the game in a new way. Thank you!

Can't really say much categorically, because every game differs so much. Sometimes you need to wage war early to break out from a limited position, meaning you focus on military and whipping, and less on building up an economy (it's a good exercise in recovery though), and at other times you can expand to 10+ cities by 1AD and pump through the techs. Maybe you have some nice rivers as well - prime land for cottages.

200 by 1AD is a good target, but it's by no means an easy feat. It's nice to have some targets to measure yourself against, however, and this might be a good one for working on your economy and gradually improving.

* * *

You mention cottaging elsewhere in the post: I wouldn't cottage everything green. You ought to find out what each city needs, and build those improvements. What will the role of city X be? Commerce? Military/hammers? Great people farm? A mixed bag?

Due to the strength of Bureaucracy, I generally cottage all green riverside tiles in the capital - food permitting. In the capital, I may also cottage non-riverside green tiles, but only in rare cases, and it's not the norm. In other cities, I just cottage riverside tiles, and not always. It depends on what the city needs. Are there some green mines but the city lacks food? Then you need farms.

After Civil Service, farms can also irrigate water, which means you can turn "dry corn/wheat/rice" wet, which in practice means they gain one extra .

If you haven't checked it out yet, you could take a look at this thread, which goes through City Specialisation.
As you will see, how you shape a city isn't limited to just how you improve the tiles, but what buildings you construct. No point with a barracks if a city won't be producing (many) military units, and little point with a market if the city will mainly be producing military units. Markets are generally quite crap.

Thanks.

@Lazarus_Cato
Most of the questions you asked me have already been answered by other people, I only have a few things to point out.

First, I would say you shouldn't focus too much on difficulty. Once you "master" the game basics you should get easy wins on emperor pretty quickly. The thing is that on difficulties up to emperor (some would even say on immortal), you can basically outtech the AI pretty easily as soon as you master the basics, as long as you don't make too many "stupid" mistakes. For example, on emperor the AI most of the time won't get rifling until 1400AD, which means you can basically roll over the whole world with Cuirassiers, or even trebs + maces as long as you get these before 1000AD / 500AD.

At the time where I used to play on emperor, I used to automate workers as soon as I had improved the resources, and never cottaged the capital. I just rushed for litterature, great library + national Epic in capital, possibly MoM and bulbed/GA'd my way to cuirs. I had a cuir army by 1000-1100AD and rolled over 2-3 AIs without much trouble and close to 0 planning. Then I moved up to Immortal and got my ass kicked every single time as this "strategy" didn't work anymore. There still was an enormous amount of very basic civ4 concepts I didn't master at the time. Thus, most of my civ4 learning process was made playing immortal games.

The point I'm trying to make is that you should probably post an Emperor game on the forums (Immortal is definitely to hard to start with), and play along with the advice of more experienced players. The logic behind that is that while playing on Noble/Prince you can manage your economy completely wrong and still pull out an easy win. Playing on a higher difficulty straight off might not give you straight wins, but will help you much more with the more difficulty-tied game mechanics (REx, Diplo, Tech trades...).

About AZ's let's plays : Not only are they very entertaining to watch, but most of my civ knowledge comes from there. If you are looking for milestones, you might just take the average dates he gets in his pangaea lib games, these are a good medium term goal to aim at.

About Huayna : He is waay too cheesy to be a good leader to learn the game. Unless you want to achieve some crazy record (BC space? ^^), I wouldn't recommend playing with him. Many even find him boring to play, as, even on deity, you basically only have to quechua-rush your closest neighbour and the game is usually won from there...

I would however agree that playing a Spi leader is a good way to mess around with civics and see how they affect your economy. To that regard, I think Saladin is a good leader for practice (Pro is a "neutral" trait)

Okay, I'll probably finish NC1 and then post up an emperor game on Sunday

Hey LC..where there is two ways to look at the game you posted above:

1) First way is that you went for AP victory, which as mentioned is not only a gimmicky VC, but also really something that has its own path to victory. So if you are going for AP from the start, you focus things toward that the AP victory. What that means that a) you usually only need a few cities..in fact, 4 is fine b) I'd usually want to Oracle>Theo especially with marble nearby c) and with marble nearby I'd likely settle even a crap city to get it online asap (noting that other than a strong developed cap and maybe secondary city or two, the cities beyond the first couple don't matter all that much.

AP is about getting to Theo asap, switching to whatever the AP religion will be to build AP as fast as you can. Managing diplo as best as possible (there's some tricks around this. And spreading the AP religion to all civs so that the "ap victory" vote will take place, while managing the balance of AP votes so that not only you win the vote, but rather you have the appropriate ratio of votes so that winning is possible.

Generally, you either try to manage diplo in such a way (open borders, trading resources and techs, religion/no religion, etc) so that at least a couple of folks vote for you, but you can almost win without it. A little trick about AP is that you can switch to the AP religion on the turn of the vote without the diplo impact on that turn (in other words the vote will happen based on the relations prior to that switch). If you've not already realized this, your AP influence is increased significantly (i think doubled) by being in the AP religion.

So, AP is really a very different type of game (although you can of course try to use AP as a fallback VC later in the game ..at least before Mass Media). Just like Culture Victory is a very different type of game. Of course, certain basic mechanics must be utilized and are useful, but different strategies are usually employed.

If one really pushes for early Theo and fast AP build (Ramses is a very good leader for this), combined with judicious spreading in the meantime, you can achieve very early AP dates. Also, note that fairly early you can settle/infect cities real fast nearby - just crapppy ones, and gift them to far away AIs to get them as members quickly.

It'll probably be a while before I go for another AP win but I'll come back to this for sure - because it was fun and it would be cool to learn how to "cheese" it like a pro.

2) The other way to look at your game is what we've been talking about before..just simple learning of game mechanics. So here are thoughts in that vein (not thinking AP here):

a) I see 3 fairly decent cities (cap and adjacent two). Osaka and Toku could have been settled a tile closer each way to Kyoto, but the good thing here is you settled next to food. Regardless, not bad cities really. I mean Tokyo is not winning awards..but hey..it's really all you got there. Satsuma is good in one sense that you settled next to food. However, it is quite far away and as others mentioned it is an awkward settle with all that unusable coast and desert. Ofc, your intent here was "green" for cottages, which in this case is a bad idea. I might have settled this closer again to Kyoto..maybe 1SW of cows, which brings the marble online eventually. Nanners can go to some other city later and all that is jungle up there anyway, which takes IW and effort.

b) Next, and important concept is the rate of expansion, which in your game is quite slow. (as mentioned, you were going for AP so really did not need a lot of cities but where looking at this neutrally now) In a traditional game, you really need to expand quite a bit faster here. However, this land is pretty sucky outside your immediate area. You don't need to just settle a city for the sake of settling one. For instance, that spot directly south is complete crap, and I'd probably ignore it completely in most games, or if going late and corporation, something like Sushi/Mining could make it feasible if pushing for high scores. ( I mean think about, what is that tundra city with no resources doing for you right now..nothing but increasing your maintenance)

c) So what is the answer then? What do you do when you are in ..what appears to be..close proximity to AI capitals, and good land and resources are at a premium? The answer is you go kill peoples! ha. Yes, don't build settlers, build armies. (again, that was not your goal but that is how I would play it). And the best solution here is horsies. Chariots do fine on this level, but on higher levels I'd probably be pushing for fast Horse Archers, which are very effective early units for conquering. Just straight up Horse Archer armies using speed and tactics to wipe out the enemies and get more stuff for you. Even 3 cities is fine for this approach using slavery and chops to get out a fast army.

(and no, if Satsuma was settled coastal you do not need a LH) Keep in mind that as long as you settle correctly (food/strats), cities don't need to be very large outside your cap early on. Main thing you want in secondary cities is food and production. You want "growth potential" since "food is production", but that does not mean cities need to grow large early on....they need to grow as fast so you can turn that growth into production (whip)

And again, I repeat. I would focus less on "mastering" a difficulty level. Go to Prince or even Monarch if you wish. (Prince is not a huge bump, but Monarch does offer some different things like AIs starting with archery now).

Heck, I recommend not even thinking about Victory Conditions either. Run a game with us and focus on where you need to be at ..say..1AD. Let us get you there and then you can take that game wherever you choose.

I can feel my game getting stronger already. Pedro suggested running a Emperor game, which I think I will do come Sunday.

In addition it's impossible to settle cities in such a way that all tiles in your empire fall within some cities' BFC and you have no overlap. Either you have some overlap or you have tiles that no city can work.

I have seen the light!

[...] you can put 4 or less hammers into an axe/spear (35h), whip it, and get up to 29 hammers of overflow towards anything

How does that work? 4 hammers into a 35 hammer axeman = 31 left... nevermind, 2 pop whips, duh! (Yay I'm learning)