WoundedKnight's CIV Strategy Guide

[Heroes]

You can't have watermills across from each other, nor on the corners of a river. So even a city with a lot of river you're lucky to have 4 watermills. And then there are all the cities with no rivers at all. I guess on a high river map that's great to have. Really, all of these civics can be useful in certain situations, which is great. I also don't value communism technology much and get it late, but I'll give state property a better chance the next game I play if I haven't won by that point.

Could you please explain a bit more about watermill position? I see 2 watermills as neighbors on 1 side of river. Do you mean they can't be on the 2 sides of a river?

Anyway, state property also adds 1 food to windmill, which can be built on any hill tile. That's also great, since hill rich cities tend to lack food, then suddenly the citizens can make life from hills.

Edit: Oops, state property adds 1 food for workshop, not windmill, sorry ...

 

[Heroes]

Yes, I have verified in-game that organized religion DOES boost wonder speed, which makes it a terrific civic, especially considering how early it is available.

Sometimes wonders are considered buildings (i.e. the organized religion bonus does apply to wonders) and other times they are not (i.e. universal suffrage allows rushing of units and buildings for cash, but not wonders). It's somewhat confusing and this distinction is not made in the civilopedia or manual.

In my memory, universal suffrage indeed allows you to rush wonders, the only difference being that the cash : hammer ratio is double of that for normal buildings. Maybe you see the rush button grey because you don't have enough cash?

 

[Yao777]

I think if you hover the mouse over it even when grey it'll tell you how much gold it would have cost that you don't have.

 

[Sir Toma]

Wonders counts as buildings as far as Organized religion is concerned.

They also count for buildings as far as slavery is concerend which means you can whip the population to finish your pyramids or what have you

 

[snepp]

Not in this case. It is somewhat confusing as sometimes "Gold" and "commerce" are used interchangeably when in fact they are distinct concepts.

Yes, very distinct concepts, which can lead to confusion when discussing game mechanics.

As I understand it (others please correct me if I am wrong), squares with or without improvements produce *commerce*. This commerce can then be used to fund research, culture, or turned into gold. Improvements (towns etc) and the financial trait actually give you commerce, not gold.

This is correct, and this is reflected within the game when the civlopedia lists cottages and like giving a commerce bonus.

Now of course there is some gold *outside* of the commerce system: namely, gold generated by religious buildings. I think that specialist gold also goes directly to finances and is not general "commerce" that can be converted to research.

Correct again. Something else to note, that trade routes generate commerce, which is then divided up based upon your percentages.

In other words, the benefit of the improvements depends highly on the position of your sliders. If you played with research on 20% and money on 80%, obviously the financial improvements (market, grocer, bank, etc) would be more valuable. Since in most games however research plays such an important role, science improvements tend to offer greater benefits.

Overall I would have to agree with this. If you're riding 100% research, building a bank isn't going to do you much good unless you've got a decent amount of gold that ignores the slider percentages.

 

[Elegantly]

Thanks for this introduction, WoundedKnight.

 

[walkerjks]

You can generate LOTS of GP without wonders. As philosophical, there are only a few wonders I go out of the way for. The Parthenon is a must.

I disagree slightly with this. The bonuses are additive, not multiplicative. So Philosophical alone give you +100% gpp/turn, and Philosophical + Parthenon give you +150% gpp/turn, an actual increase of only +25%. Furthermore, if you have one specialist city generating half your gpp and that city has the National Epic, your effective gain from the Parthenon becomes closer to +20% for your whole civ. In any case, due to the slowly increasing costs of great people, any per turn bonus actually translates into a somewhat smaller increase in great people. So for a philosophical leader, the Parthenon might only result in an effective gain of +15% or so actual great people. Very nice, but not critical.

 

[podraza]

WoundedKnight,

No farms? Could you elaborate on this? Aren't they important?

 

[WoundedKnight]

WoundedKnight,

No farms? Could you elaborate on this? Aren't they important?

Generally no, not except for resources that require farms. Here's why...it relates to the final benefit you get with upgraded improvements (i.e. improvements with necessary tech, location, and civics if applicable):

I build watermills everywhere I can, mines on mountains, and cottages everywhere else:

Town commerce +7, production +1
watermill production +2, food +1, commerce +2

I almost never build these:
Farm: food +2
windmill food +1, production +1, commerce +2
lumbermills production +1, commerce +1 (if near river only)

The initial farm food is just +1, and the next +1 you don't get until biology -well after almost all of my cottages have become towns. Lumbermill benefits are minimal..you get the same production and a lot more commerce from cottages. Chop the trees down to rush settlers or wonders, and build a cottage, watermill, or mine instead to restore some productivity (and give more food, in the case of the first two) and generate far richer commerce.

Windmills don't strike me as being particularly worthwhile (they are down one production in comparison to watermills), although the AI builds them all over the place. I use watermills instead of farms -- as much food bonus as early farms (+1), plus the production bonus of a forest (+2 hammers) and extra commerce (+2, +3 if financial).

Cottages take time to develop, so I focus on building them early and stick with them. I find that production is more limited than food in most games, hence this algorithm. The increased commerce will put you ahead in tech, and the increased productivity will pay for itself in short order by giving you faster buildings and wonders in the city. Of course one could make a case that there are appropriate times to build farms. Especially if you are desparate for a few extra citizen points to get a couple more specialists for GPs at the end-game and are willing to sacrifice a big chunk of productivity and commerce to do so. But in general, I would rather build more cities and have them focus on production and commerce, instead of having cities with huge populations but poor productivity and low income.

Whatever kind of victory you are aiming for -- conquest, domination, culture, spaceship, etc... -- you need production and commerce to get there. And improvements that produce a combined total of food, production, and commerce of +8 (towns) or +5 (watermills) obviously offer much more to your city on the whole than improvements that add only +1 or +2 (farms and lumbermills).

 

[podraza]

Thanks, very helpful.

 

[dh_epic]

I tend to combine certain wonders with certain traits and certain civics.

Parthenon, Great Library, and Statue of Liberty with Philosophical, Pacifism, Mercantilism, Pacifism, and lots of Farms. WOW!

Or early religions, with an easy stop for the Oracle, later going for the Spiral Minaret, and any wonder that boosts my Holy Cities into super cities (like the Colossus).

Or aggressive with the pentagon and versailles.

Some wonders are always good though. I must say, I always make the Great Library a priority. But that's depending on your play style.

 

[Heroes]

Town commerce +7, production +1
watermill production +2, food +1, commerce +2

I almost never build these:
Farm: food +2
windmill food +1, production +1, commerce +2
lumbermills production +1, commerce +1 (if near river only)

Emm, the actual benefit of lumbermill should be 3 hammers instead of 1. One from the forest itself, one from lumbermill, one from railroad. It's not a weak improvement.

The general rule, as I think, is to balance food requirment for each city. For example, if a city has just grasslands and hills, to make enough food for all the citizens, you have 2 choices: farm + mine, or cottage + windmill. The latter is better, because you get much more commerce, and don't lose much production (if any).

 

[Heroes]

A thought about farm: when you have quite some health and happiness resource and get a new city, it's maybe better to build farms around it. This way its population can reach the health or happiness limit faster. Then change farms to cottages. Yeah, it takes a lot time for cottages to grow, but that doesn't mean you should build cottages all around from the beginning. A cottage can grow ONLY if a citizen works there, so you'd better get the necessary people first.

 

[modix]

Not in this case. It is somewhat confusing as sometimes "Gold" and "commerce" are used interchangeably when in fact they are distinct concepts.

As I understand it (others please correct me if I am wrong), squares with or without improvements produce *commerce*. This commerce can then be used to fund research, culture, or turned into gold. Improvements (towns etc) and the financial trait actually give you commerce, not gold.

Then the benefit of city improvements depends on both your base commerce and your sliders. Say you have a small city producing 10 commerce, and your research slider is on 80%, with 20% going into finances. A library (+25% research) will give you an extra 2 beakers (base research = 80% of 10 = 8, 25% of 8 = 2 more). A grocer, however (+25% gold) would seem not to have any benefit to an economy this small (base gold = 20% of 10 = 2, and 25% of 2= 0.5, rounded down to zero).

Now of course there is some gold *outside* of the commerce system: namely, gold generated by religious buildings. I think that specialist gold also goes directly to finances and is not general "commerce" that can be converted to research.

In other words, the benefit of the improvements depends highly on the position of your sliders. If you played with research on 20% and money on 80%, obviously the financial improvements (market, grocer, bank, etc) would be more valuable. Since in most games however research plays such an important role, science improvements tend to offer greater benefits.

Again this is my understanding of things, and I welcome any corrections or other data.

Beauracracy affects both production and commerce, not gold produced. I was uncertain of this due to the ambiguous coin icon in the Civilopedia. In order to test it I built a traditional science city (GL + Oxford + academy) in my second city. It was producing ~150 science per turn mid-game.

I then flipped to beauracracy and built a palace in the second city to see if it would affect the science production. After the palace finished I saw a near 50% increase in its production. It started producing around 220 research post palace move.

If I'm correct, I think this makes for an interesting choice between whether or not to sticking your palace in your production or research city. The major boost I got is one reason I stuck with beauracracy as long as I did.

 

[podraza]

WoundedKnight,

I'm new to micromanagement, so bear with me here. When deciding how to specialize your cities, you said the ones with high production capacity should be used for military cities. What would you consider to be "high" production capacity. According to your mills/watermills/cotteges rule, the only square with productive value (for hammers) is a hill or a river square, correct? (I understand towns can later produce hammers with a late game civic).

So how many of the 21 tiles do you think should fall into one of these two categories to qualify as highly productive? Ballpark figure, of course.

 

[WoundedKnight]

Emm, the actual benefit of lumbermill should be 3 hammers instead of 1. One from the forest itself, one from lumbermill, one from railroad. It's not a weak improvement.

I haven't listed the fact that land (usually) gets more food after the forests are cut down, and so there is no need to acknowledge the +1 production/-1 food of forests. To be consistent, my list only includes the actual production/food/commerce bestowed by the terrain itself -- it would be too confusing to mix it up by attributing innate terrain features to the improvement.

BTW, the civilopedia is wrong on lumbermills as the improvements/lumbermill section fails to acknowledge the +1 production of lumbermills with railroad.

Still lumbermills offer only +2 production/+1 commerce (if near a river) -- in the best possible case, and the railroad is much later than almost all of the other improvement techs. IMO there are better ways to get productivity (mines, watermills, towns). Remember that watermills add the same +2 productivity of upgraded lumbermills -- in addition to having more food because they are on better land, and an extra food bonus if you have state property. The extra POP that you get from having more food will let you more than make up a minimal difference in the productivity of one square by working more squares or getting research. The fact that high productivity is maintained without the lumbermill is attested by the fact that my city productivity is always way ahead without the AI...better to have many large cities with mines, watermills, and towns than small cities with lumbermills.

Also chop-rushing is a key early on in pumping out both settlers and wonders. So unfortunately I haven't found any use for lumbermills yet that isn't served by better alternatives.

 

[WoundedKnight]

When deciding how to specialize your cities, you said the ones with high production capacity should be used for military cities. What would you consider to be "high" production capacity. According to your mills/watermills/cottages rule, the only square with productive value (for hammers) is a hill or a river square, correct? (I understand towns can later produce hammers with a late game civic).

So how many of the 21 tiles do you think should fall into one of these two categories to qualify as highly productive? Ballpark figure, of course.

Again, upgraded towns DO produce a hammer each, which can make any city productive. Even cities on the plains with no water and no hills can become modestly productive through the construction of towns alone: every square is contributing something to production; there are no "food-only" tiles.

IMO a good military (production) city is a river city with has at least 4 hills in its fat cross radius, and not more than 2 or 3 useless tiles (desert or mountains).

You can get fabulous productivity and better (short and long-term) growth and commerce by avoiding the lumbermill entirely. +2 production from watermills, +2 from mines, +1 from towns, in addition to any innate terrain and resource bonuses.

 

[jstreed]

I build watermills everywhere I can, mines on mountains, and cottages everywhere else:

Town commerce +7, production +1
watermill production +2, food +1, commerce +2

I almost never build these:
Farm: food +2
windmill food +1, production +1, commerce +2
lumbermills production +1, commerce +1 (if near river only)

The initial farm food is just +1, and the next +1 you don't get until biology -well after almost all of my cottages have become towns. Lumbermill benefits are minimal..you get the same production and a lot more commerce from cottages. Chop the trees down to rush settlers or wonders, and build a cottage, watermill, or mine instead to restore some productivity (and give more food, in the case of the first two) and generate far richer commerce.

Windmills don't strike me as being particularly worthwhile (they are down one production in comparison to watermills), although the AI builds them all over the place. I use watermills instead of farms -- as much food bonus as early farms (+1), plus the production bonus of a forest (+2 hammers) and extra commerce (+2, +3 if financial).

).

If river tiles are reserved for watermills, why not turn them into farms early on for the population increase? They can always ben converted into watermills later. I agree with the mine/hills and cottages strategy, although the needed techs to fully upgrade cottages/towns take quite a while to research. What would you recommend as a research path to make this strategy effective? I play cultural/financial and I've found the research ability of the cottage strategy to be amazing. I'm just trying to figure out how to improve it.

 

[Slax]

After some maturation, I'd love to see this thread reworked into a Word or pdf strategy document.

 

[zerothehero]

About not Building Farms. Surely if you want 1 City to produce Settlers/Workers (Specialization) then buliding farms around that city is the only real option, as you don't need hammers so the city with most hammers can be improvement/wonder city?