Early/Mid game catch up

[cd_goldberg]

I've probably played about five games of Civ4 so far, all on Noble. Each game has basically turned out the same way: I start out just fine, and do just as well as the other civs (as far as I can tell by my neighbors) up until about the 40th turn or so. Then, everybody seems to surpass me in the points race. It takes me until the late industrial age to finally catch up with everyone else and retake the lead, but I can't figure out the right mix of early/mid game management.

My main problem is having the necessary income to found enough cities early on. It seems like there comes a point in the game where I always have negative income, and if I found more cities at that point, it just keeps getting worse. To compensate for this, I lower my tech rate, but that just makes it harder to catch up to the other civs. So how do I fix this problem? Do I just keep pumping out workers and spam hamlets all over the place to make more money? Should I lower my tech rate right off the bat and make money?

[Blake]

Hmmm avoid the hamlets I say, they are good in the very long run but you're having short run problems.

Found cities as long as there are resources to be grabbed, do make sure to have defense for the cities. Use "chop" to accelerate your early growth.
I take a "Devil may care" attitude towards paying for expansion, if there are good spots, I plonk cities on them. Don't found cities just for the sake of founding cities though, only sites with resources or a nice river are worth it. (basically crappy cities are a pure drain on your economy, unlike a good city they are less capable of paying for the increase in unkeep, so only found good cities - I've yet to expand so much that a new good city will be unable to pay for it's existence).

For terraforming, go with farms and mines, farms and mines, farms and mines... hamlets can kill your growth and production. They don't let you "do" much, it's better to have cities capable of quickly throwing up universities and such, this offsets the lower commerce from a lack of hamlets.

Basically a high production city can quickly pump out library, university etc to make up low commerce, but there's not much a high commerce city can do to make up for low production; with high production and food comes flexibility. (note you can also change mine workers to specialists if needed)
(if a city just has TOO much food, then you can build hamlets, like any city with dual food resources will do fine with hamlets and mines)

If it helps, my usual tech beeline looks something like this:
If spiritual: Grab a religion.
Tech to Bronze Working for "chop" and axemen.
Grab some worker techs if some resources are crying out to be connected (note: if you can build along rivers you can delay roads).
If not spiritual: wander off after a religion if it looks feasible, or grab a culture tech (if non-creative).
Head to Alphabet.

Once I have Alphabet under my belt I can do a bit of tech whoring with the AI's, which is all good. Why reinvent the wheel?

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Blake
For terraforming, go with farms and mines, farms and mines, farms and mines... hamlets can kill your growth and production. They don't let you "do" much, it's better to have cities capable of quickly throwing up universities and such, this offsets the lower commerce from a lack of hamlets.

This sounds like civ2 stategy. You really don't need that many farms (if the site allows them at all). Just build enough farms to reach your happiness/health cap. If you reached that cap, more food is wasted. What you want your city to produce is wealth(science) and hammers. Or often better, wealth or hammers. And villages are the ultimate wealth producers. They are far from useless.

[V3nom]

actually you should grow past your health cap if you can. DONT grow past your happiness cap though because the citizen is wasted.

going over your health cap will simply give you -1food per point you go over it. if you use that extra citizen on say.. a farmed grassland next to a river you're counteracting the -1 food, keeping yourself in surplus and getting an extra commerce.. there is no reason NOT to grow past your health cap as much as you can really.

[Nacht]

Still you have a tile that produces food that gets wasted, better get specialists instead.

[V3nom]

there's nothing to say you cant go past the cap and get specilists. I do it quite often when I've got a reasonable number of floodplains in my city Radius. farm them up and use the excessive food to get many more specialists than I'd otherwise be able to even if my city is unhealthy.

[Nacht]

Well, yes, I honestly haven't figured out the optimum use of food surplus, but I am quite sure that 'farm, mine, farm, mine, neglect cottages' isn't exactly the most benificial advice.

[V3nom]

oh I agree with you completely on that one, I was just saying that the health limit should be seen as a 'soft barrier' while happiness is a 'hard barrier'

[Blake]

Originally posted by Nacht


This sounds like civ2 stategy. You really don't need that many farms (if the site allows them at all). Just build enough farms to reach your happiness/health cap. If you reached that cap, more food is wasted. What you want your city to produce is wealth(science) and hammers. Or often better, wealth or hammers. And villages are the ultimate wealth producers. They are far from useless.

Well I've had more success with a policy of "If in doubt, farm/mine" rather than "If in doubt, cottage". In many cases there is no doubt that more food isn't needed (like with a cow and rice in the radius...), but there will probably still be more productive things to do than make cottages, like chopping, mining, or farming at other cities, or laying roads. I never really find myself thinking "Gee, wish I could research faster" during the early stages of the game, production is the limiting factor.

I carefully avoided saying cottages are useless. I said they are a luxury . Food and hammers is what pumps out settlers, military and infrastructure! Settlers get you new resources! These resources I should add often give like +5 commerce when improved, that's MUCH better than a lousy cottage until end game. (in fact I think specials are where a good chunk of my research comes from... along with rivers).

I start building cottages seriously after my initial expansion phase, when my interior cities are safe and I can't justify building any more settlers, also, I confess, some of my cities get chopped clean of forest and hence end up with a huge amount of grassland, theres not much to do with those cities OTHER than cottage them. In short my terraforming strategy is to mine all the hills (plains forests can work too), match the food deficit with farms (and maybe an extra +4food for growth), then everything else gets cottages, so the big cities do end up working a whole heap of cottages - but it's very much not an early game thing.

[Adderax]

Problem here is, that you see the benefit of a mine immediately, a town though takes a long time to develop, and the risk involved with loosing it is harsh.

The way I play now, I pillage more than I destroy. The computer will hide behind walls if you have a decent size force of fast movers that can pilage fast. Destroy an infrastructure and that computer will never overtake your score (currently playing on monarch).

Favorite Leader? The Khan's. If it's a tropical map, Ghengis, if not, the other guy. Their UU is priceless.


ps: Pillaging a village to dust gets you about ~60-80gold. That's very good income when you are under on the checkbook.

[Saurus]

When playing a civ with the economic-trait and happen to start next to a river, I really love the cottages since you get that +1 extra income the very moment you finnish the cottage.
Say 2 squares of foodplain with cottages both with 3 economic income (4 after 10 turns) increases early research considerably and city still growing almost too quickly.
Since built early, you have your towns when others are just starting to build cottages. It really makes a difference.

[Cort Haus]

cd_goldberg,

Post a savegame of your empire slowing down - it'll be easier for people to advise. Perhaps you're founding too many cities too soon - or maybe having too many units outside your borders, or running expensive Civics. Check the F2 for your economic report. Have you tried an Organised Civ? They can expand cheaper.

Blake,

I'm not sure about cottages being "lousy" until the endgame. Having towns in the classical era is fun and profitable.

[cd_goldberg]

Wow, you guys, I wake up to 11 posts! Thanks a bunch! I'll try to find a savegame of my empire.

[cd_goldberg]

Here's one with the English. It's bad even for me. Take note of my weak army, that's another problem . I've played since Civ2 pretty moderately but haven't been able to rise above the status of mediocre. Any help will be greatly appretiated.


P.S. I hope that file works, I've never uploaded a saved game before.

[V3nom]

ok I'm looking at your save now and I'm just going to make a few random comments that _I_ think would improve your empire. I dont know if they'll turn around your falling behind the AIs but if everyone chips in their ideas hopefully it'll help .

York producing the great lighthouse? you have a grand total of one costal city, unless you're doing it for the GL points perhaps you should consider if its worth the cost.

Your capital should probably be more improved already and you need to learn how to order improvement to gain access to the most valuable tiles first. The single floodplains within your fat cross should have been irrigated before the grassland was. the wheat should have been farmed before the cottage was put down. The hill should have been mined already. Little things like this would mean your capital would be larger and more productive.

Same thing goes for nottingham, develop those hills and that floodplains. Mine that Iron asap as it'll give your production a large boost even if nothing else.

You have too many workers working around Vizigoth despite the fact it will not be able to use 1/2 those squares for quiet some time.

give hastings a culture boosting building so it can expand and get those special resources rather than a barracks. Use nottingham to produce its defenders because it already has a barracks, civ4 is all about specialisation remember?

I wouldnt bother with walls in London, your culture is already providing more defence then they would.

Those swordsmen up by the barbarian village shouldnt have combat 1 unless you encountered enemy troops as you moved them and needed the quick boost. Only use upgrades when they need them because it allows you to tailor the upgrades to the situation. They should have had city raider 1 because it plays to their natural strength and gives them more of a boost in that particular situation.