Vel's Strategy Thread

[Alexfrog]

I agree...the AI strategy of pillaging is correct in most cases. It just pillages stuff you dont actually need as well, giving you time.

Of course, its probably beneficial for him to pillage htose squares eventually, it hurts your chances to expand into that area, and it gets them money.

Its just that this buys you a bit of time.
Also, it cant necessarily tell if those squares are being used in a city or not, so I think its fine the way it is.

Originally posted by yin26
The issue of AI pillaging is an interesting one, and I'd wager that the AI behavior as-is will likely prove more useful more of the time than beelining for a city. Consider that cities provide your units massive defense bonuses. Also consider that if you attack his units out in the open, you've not only lost that defensive bonus, but now *you* give the AI defensive bonses by virture of being the attacker. Sometimes, too, you don't have the right counter ready (think stealth bombers when you have no AA), so it's possible the AI can literally bring you economy to nothing in a matter of turns by pillaging.

Then, of course, having to vacate your cities (to whatever degree) in order to get at the AI out in the open leaves those cities vulnerable to attacks from another direction or from the AI stack itself if it does well against your attacks.

Of course, it would be ideal for the AI to beeline to a city when it "knows" it has sufficient force to take it without massive losses. No doubt there. And the idea of a pillage zone is a good one as long as you have the units ready to turn that to your advantage. But if the AI is working in the dark, so to speak, with no cheats as to knowing what the precise composition of your army is, then I think pillaging as it stands now is generally the perfect thing for the AI to be doing.

[Aeson]

Happiness is only the limiting factor on growth rather early on in the game, and even then may not be depending on your resources. Once you have Religion(s), Hereditary Rule, and/or Drama, you should never have Happiness limiting your population, except for times of major War Weariness.

Chopping Forests past a Health plateau is decreasing your city size for most of the game. Even chopping Forests that don't directly lower your Health can indirectly do so by limiting future Forest spread and of course putting you one more Forest away from the next plateau.

The true judge of which strategy is better, is which one gives you the best chance on deity difficulty.

I disagree in regards to any specific strategy. A strategy should always be judged by how it works in specific circumstances, and the resulting analysis limited to those it's application in those circumstances. If you have great results with a strategy on Deity with a specific type of start, that doesn't mean the strategy is better than others even in different circumstances on Deity and especially not on lower difficulties.

As for what works "best" on Deity, it's the same as every other difficulty. The situation dictates what approaches will be viable. I think that becomes much more clear on Deity even, because if you limit yourself to a certain strategy, when you run into situations where that strategy doesn't apply as well as others could, you pay a much higher price for being inefficient than you would on a lower difficulty level.

Regarding Forests and chopping in general, Deity really smacks you upside the head with how much Health and Happiness are limited. Not just the starting bonus being less for each, but in more difficulty claiming and holding resources and being able to set aside production and/or commerce to address Health and Happiness with.

Thus, the Health benefit of Forests makes a bigger % difference in max population for a good share of the game. That's because the % difference between a size 4 or 5 city is bigger than between a size 10 or 11 city. At the same time, you start in a bigger hole. Up-front advantages like the production from Forest chopping helps you get out of that hole faster. All else equal, once you're out of the hole, things become easier. But if you've dug yourself other holes to fall into in the future in doing so, you might not have accomplished anything.

The balance is still there. You can chop everything, you can save all your Forests, or something inbetween. Each offers advantages, and how well you do will be mostly dependent on which path is most conducive to success in the specific circumstance you find yourself in. Not only will it vary from game to game, but also city by city and turn by turn.

In the few Deity games I've won, Forest chopping has been important in limited circumstances within each game. Saving Forests has been important in other limited circumstances within each game. I ended up keeping roughly half the Forests. That in and of itself doesn't mean anything, as in other circumstances it might have been best to clear cut or save all the Forests, and other times there may be no relative advantage for either path.

[Alexfrog]

I've been having happiness as the limiting factor for my city growth, rather than happiness, and thats with chopping most of the trees.

Maybe it depends mostly on the resources you get?
Also, perhaps it depends on wether you have a lot of fresh water access?

I've been playing on inland sea and lakes maps mostly, and I have lots of fresh water for +2 health.

You get huge health bonuses when you have a lot of cows/rice/sheep/wheat, etc, plus stuff like fish/crabs, plus granary. Then acqueduct and finally grocer come along later on.

In the later ages (where I am supposed to care about my lack of forests??) I was having stuff like 15-17 health and 12-15 happiness in my big cities, and happiness was limiting.

It requires three forests in a city area to get 1 health. That just seems like so many potential chops that you arent utilizing.

[Arrian]

Yeah, that sounds like a map type thing... I play on continents maps more often, and I'll usually have cows and wheat but not corn and rice or vice-versa. I'll have fish but not crab... etc.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

I had growth issue due to happiness. I had no religion and could not make temples. No religion founded by me nor any spread.

I had to wait for colleseums. I am not so sure I want to try the heathen approach now.

[ducki]

Also, it cant necessarily tell if those squares are being used in a city or not, so I think its fine the way it is.

To me, the issue isn't whether tiles are being used or not - as the Pillage Zone strategy specifically states that the Pillage Zone is outside the city's workable "fat cross" tiles.

To me, the issue is whether the tile is workable in a city, not whether it is being worked. Tiles outside the workable area should be lower priority for pillaging unless they are resources or part of a trade-route-severing plan.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Alexfrog
I've been having happiness as the limiting factor for my city growth, rather than happiness, and thats with chopping most of the trees.

Maybe it depends mostly on the resources you get?

Drama allows use of the Culture slider. The Culture slider affects happiness (straight, and with bonuses by Theaters and Colloseums). If you run your empire properly, the Culture slider can be paying for itself when it raises the Happiness limit. More workers means more commerce coming in, so as long as they pay for their own Happiness at least, anything else is extra. It's even more useful than Civ III's Luxury slider, as you get the Culture boost too, and there is no corruption to devaluate it in non-core cities.

Hereditary Rule allows using a military unit for +1 happiness. That also can eliminate happiness worries, and outside the Pyramids, will be the only Government Civic for quite a while anyways.

Religions are also a way to address happiness. Temples are pretty cheap, so having multiple religions can really pay off.

That's 3 ways to address happiness problems. 2 of them are virtually unlimited, meaning that Happiness never really has to be the limit on population except for pre-Drama or pre-Monarchy.

[khumak]

I always run out of food before I hit my happiness cap. Usually about city size 12-15 is the biggest I can get until Biology without crippling my economy by doing just farms.

[V3nom]

Originally posted by conmcb25


It doesn't JUST FOR industrial, it worked for me as Friedrich last night

I phrased that extremely poorly (to the point it didnt say what I wanted it to :P)

it meant to read 'being Industrial does boost the resources you get from chopping when you are producing a wonder'

[V3nom]

something else I'd like to add: People seem extremely paranoid about folood plains when imho there's no real need to be.

health negatives from a flood plain can, imho, be safely ignored? why you ask, because they are simply outweighed by the floodplain itself.

below I will attempt to explain this. I will be comparing them to the 'default tile' (or as close to one as there is in the game) of grassland.

Let me use the example of a city with 5 floodplain squares because it gives a nice even health calculation. 5 floodplains x0.4 unhealthiness = 2 less health than a city without floodplains.

each of these flood plains will produce 3 food and 1 gold, compared to the 2 food and 1 gold a grassland next to the river would produce. So a total of 1 extra food can be produced in each.

So in a situation where a city without the floodplains would be at its health limit a city with these 5 floodplains would be exceeding it by 2. meaning that it would be consuming two extra food per turn. however if you work just two of these five flood plains you are breaking even. Work more than 2 and you are exceeding the food consumption. Put an irrigation on one of these flood plains and it alone will make up for the unhealthiness.

Basically you should fee free to found a city on a tile with as many floodplains as you like. You should also not be afraid of cutting down tree's simply because you are near floodplains if you think the shields are important.

Flood plains are not the bane of unhealthiness that people make them out to be, rather their excessively large food potential can actaully be used to negate the effects of factories and smelters.

to sum up my ramblings: flood plains are good hmmkay? :P

[Fried-Psitalon]

Originally posted by conmcb25


It doesn't JUST FOR industrial, it worked for me as Friedrich last night

Since when did I become a Leader? What nation am I leading? Is my trait combination any good?

Unique Unit: Crazed Middle School Student? Automatic pillage on movement?

[gentle]

Originally posted by V3nom
to sum up my ramblings: flood plains are good hmmkay? :P

^^

... i like them too

[binTravkin]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon


Since when did I become a Leader? What nation am I leading? Is my trait combination any good?

Unique Unit: Crazed Middle School Student? Automatic pillage on movement?

Friedrich rules supreme!

[MVP]

Upgrade Costs?

Don't know if it should go here, or on its own thread, but I've had so much fun keeping up with this one that I'll post it here.

Is there a simple place I'm missing to find gold costs to upgrade units? In Civ 2 or 3 obsolete units were usually killed to add to a city's production or sent as sacrificial lambs.

Now, with promotions, that first warrior you got is often worth systematically upgrading through time. At some point, it has to make sense, even, to turn a couple of cities to making gold to upgrade promoted units vs. dedicating production to newfangled (but not promoted) units.

Seems like there's a lot of potential analysis here...

Without any good evidence at this point, I'm leaning toward upgrading units when possible, but haven't yet tried the strategy of maxing gold for a few turns in a couple of cities to generate the gold necessary for a mass-upgrade.

Anybody else have any thoughts on the topic?

[vmxa1]

Disbanding units even in civ3 was done more by low level players. They tend to make to many warriors and spears with no barracks. Those may be scrapped.

If you have nearly all vets, you had no reason to scrap them. Upgrading in a pinch or use for MP in that resisting towns are great options.

Civ4 makes holding them even more useful. Got that notice of barbs coming or invaders. Upgrade those units.

In either game you are not going to be well rewarded for making more units than you need and can support.