Vel's Strategy Thread, Volume II

[khearn]

Originally posted by Velociryx


Markets provide a 25% boost to g in a given city. That means a city that's making 4gpt will make 5 after the market goes into place.

NOT building markets in any city where they would be profitable simply makes no sense to my brain. That's as good as leaving money on the table. Now granted, there's a priority system in place....a city making 50gpt is gonna see more benefit to a market than the city making 8gpt, but that don't matter, because the two are not mutually exclusive....just because city A is building a market does not somehow mean that city B cannot....so again....to simply choose NOT to build such an improvement in a place where it is profitable to do so baffling to me, specialized or no.

I think the question is more along the lines of "What should this High-production, low-commerce city do with it's time/hammers; build a market, which will make 1gpt, or build 4 catapults/elephants for about the same number of hammers and have more deterrance to keep Ghengis from paying a vist (or to use to pay a vist to Ghengis)?

There is certainly no harm in building the market, as long as the time/hammers spent doing so aren't needed to build something more valuable than the market would be in that city. But if your army is a strong as you want it to be, then the market might be better than nothing.

Or maybe just building gold will get you more in a turn than the market will get you in 50 turns? Decisions, decisions...

[Son of David]

Dear Velociryx,

I will try your suggestions - between the time of my last post and now I've played two more games on Monarch!

I won the first game, playing as England. I got a big continent to myself and won scientifically and financially with a space race. Didn't get involved in any wars.

The next one was a small pangaea as Kublai Khan. I really thought I had it nailed - I built two cities and then rushed half the continent with Keshiks. I even captured the Hindu holy city and another city which had the pyramids.

But then all of a sudden I realized I had no money left - strikes for about a dozen turns! Lost all my keshiks and most of my defenders. By the time I'd researched Code of Laws and built courthouses my opponents regrouped, and Montezuma exacted a terrible revenge on me. It was kind of cool actually - the evil warmonger concentrates on subjugating his neighbours but his greed causes his great Empire to crumble.

So I will take on board your wonderful suggestions and try a rather less single-minded militaristic campaign next game. Playing as Kublai was fun though - aggressive, creative, and Keshiks as UU seems quite powerful.

[Blake]

Kubali is fun, but the conquest is so darn easy (thanks to creative) that crashing your economy is a very real possibility.

I find that, generally speaking, civs without organized or financial are hard to play as warmongers - well, the warmongering is easy, but the consequences can be dire. In any case, only organized civs can take a "Devil may care" aittitude towards mass expansion/conquest.

With Holy Cities, it's not a bad idea to leave them with their holy city (especially if it's the capital) and wait until the announcement that the shrine has been built - atleast if there are other good targets for conquest.

[Heroes]

By the way, if building lots of units at the start really is the only way to win at higher levels, what fun is that? All those wonders, religions etc that you just can't get to. Any idea of recreating the cultural splendour of an ancient empire is out the window - unless I play a scenario. It's just build units, even more units, and then some more units: and rely completely on there being resources nearby.

I think buidling lots of units is the way in civ 3, not in civ 4. Now AI doesn't receive any bonus for building wonders, so you do have good chance to grab some early wonders, and they can pay off. Not like civ 3, where the only ancient wonder worth its shields is great library. Now you can select at least from oracle and pyramid, each one has huge impact. I know somebody beats DEITY semi-peacefully. He spreads confusionism (hehe) to neighbors, allys friends to kill heathens, and gets diplomacy victory. Well, he save/load A LOT, but it's deity after all ...

[Heroes]

Originally posted by DeepO

I don't follow you at all. What do you mean with "a specialist's production is equivalent to 6 gold"?

In CIV, it's about 1 gold = 1 hammer = 1 food.

How you could calculate that? Well, the highest gains you will get from resources on your map is roughly 8 with certain techs. This is the same for food, production, and commerce. It's actually easier to get high-production tiles than it is to get high-commerce tiles (as cottages need to grow), which explains why there is a bit more commerce possible. Later on in the game, commerce is being stressed a bit more (e.g. watermills! Yoohoo!), but this only because you need more of it.

Also, commerce is split into beakers and gold. I'd say that 1 beaker is actually worth more than 1 hammer or 1 food.

Rushing gives the same results, BTW. 1 pop is about 30 food. and gives you 30 hammers. The cost of goldrushing is higher, but you can't compare gold to hammers at 1 to 1 ratio anymore when you normally get to Uni. Suffr. You'll have banks in all your gold cities, shrines, spiral minaret maybe, and trade routes everywhere.
BTW, shields transform to gold by a 1 to 1 ratio too, when you lose a wonder. (or at least that's what I thought the formula was, but I could be sorely mistaken).

Specialists are a very bad way of comparing ratios. One extra food is use when it comes from a GM. But there is no superspecialist that give raw commerce... they all give gold or beakers. They won't ever generate that much hammers, but this is simply unbalancing: you can't have a GM giving 2 fpt, as that would mean that you can get a geometrical line going: set up a city which will produce a GM every 20 turns, and by simply adding 1 extra GM once it completes, you will be able to add another merchant... meaning the next GM is again only ~20 turns away. Hammers similar: the choice was made to spread this out over different superspecialists, to counter possible abuses. This has nothing to do with one type being worth less than the other.

The reason why I might seem to be overreacting to such a small comment, is that it shows very well that you're not valueing commerce enough yet. For instance, on a river start, working a grassland (2f, 1c) from the start will beat almost any grass forest start (2f, 1h) when it comes to teching, reaching stuff, even building wonders. This little 1 extra commerce per turn is actually 11% more research... enough to beat AIs to religions. It will only be a 1 turns difference, but do you need more?

Vel only decribes a workboat start as a very high commerce (and growth) start, but there are a couple of lesser but still very valid starts. Grass near river, for instance. Lakes! Camp or plantation resources (near rivers), especially if these are in forests. FIN leaders can get by with early cottages on fp or on river grass too.

In so many games, reaching ahead in tech in a relatively safe manner will be better than focussing on a particular wonder (e.g. Pyramids). And otherwise, gold is most likely what is going to hamper you in any early expansion, either by conquest or peacefully. It doesn't matter you've got the power to build loads of units, if these are disbanding as you can't pay their wages.

DeepO

Hehe, I know you won't agree ...

I absolutely agree that there is no numerically accurate way to compare food, hammer, and commerce, because they all depend on situation: sometimes you need food (e.g. for pop rush), sometimes hammer (e.g., build wonder, war), sometimes commerce (e.g., rush tech). However, I do want push the mission impossible to its limit. The main reason I made the 1 foold = 3 gold, 1 hammer = 1.5 gold guess is that I want to determine how to use a pop head. You have 3 choices: work a tile, specialist, or pop rush.

In civ 3, the rule is really simple: work tile in productive cities, hire specialist in highly corrupt cities or when you need to rush a tech, pop rush usually is a no-no. But in civ 4, all these 3 choices make good sense. So I want to find out which tiles are not good to work by comparing its output with specialist or pop rush.

There is good reason to believe all the specialists are born equal, otherwise the game is not balanced. (Well, depends on situation, sure ...) Therefore, in zeroth order approximation, 2 hammer = 3 beaker = 3 gold (let's forget about priest and artist). That means 1 hammer = 1.5 gold, and a specialist gets a value equal to 3 gold. If with representation, 6 gold.

Now assume representation is available, and you don't have trouble with happiness or health. A specialist needs 2 food to support, therefore 1 food = 3 gold.

To determine whether a tile is worth working, you compare its output with the 6 gold + 3 GPP from specialist and 30 hammer from pop rush.

So what conclusion do I get?

1. A tile with >= 3 food is always worth working, because that's worth >= 9 gold.

2. A resource with proper improvement is often worth working, but NOT always. For example, a fur on ice generates just 4 gold, an incense on desert gets just 6 gold. Both are too few.

3. A tile with < 2 food has problem, because it delays growth. Unless you have some really good reason (it's a gold mine, for instance), it's better to work high food tiles first.

4. A tile with 2 food becomes interesting. A river grass (2/0/1)? 7 gold > 6 gold, but the excess 1 gold is too little comparing with 3 GPP. You should make a farm or cottage on it before working. A sea tile (2/0/2)? Hard to say, but it can't grow more, so if you have a cottage somewhere else, work the cottage. A forest grass (2/1/0)? Also not quite good. Better off chopping the tree and make some improvement.

5. A general conclusion is that a tile without improvement is almost never worth working, -- the same thing as civ 3!

You would probably agree with these conclusions even if without agreeing foodgold = 3:1.5:1.


I DON'T mean gold is less important than food or production. Comparing to civ 3, the importance of gold is elevated a lot. But I do need some way to make rational choices among so many options.

[Velociryx]

I think the question is more along the lines of "What should this High-production, low-commerce city do with it's time/hammers; build a market, which will make 1gpt, or build 4 catapults/elephants for about the same number of hammers and have more deterrance to keep Ghengis from paying a vist (or to use to pay a vist to Ghengis)?

There is certainly no harm in building the market, as long as the time/hammers spent doing so aren't needed to build something more valuable than the market would be in that city. But if your army is a strong as you want it to be, then the market might be better than nothing.

Or maybe just building gold will get you more in a turn than the market will get you in 50 turns? Decisions, decisions...

Oh sure, and I agree that each time a production queue stands ready to be filled with something, this kind of decision needs to be made, however:

* If the game system is so inflexible that there are truly only 1-2 "right" answers, then that means that the game DESIGN is intentionally herding people down a certain path (ie - the "right" way to play is to do this every time)....I simply have not found that to be the case.

* If you are living so completely close to the bone that the aforementioned high production city can't spare 3-4 turns to make a market, then I contend that it's highly probable that your Empire has deeper problems than these, which need to be addressed first...

Civ's all about the power of compounding....I agree. And compounding works BEST over long periods of time (even with scant returns). So let's take that city making 4gpt. If you build a market in it anyway, EVEN IF the city never gets a single coin bigger, over the course of the game it'll still more than pay for itself.

Most things in Civ are not "either/or" propositions....it's a matter of when.

Personally, in my games, at some point (maybe not right away), but sooner or later I like to build a barracks at every city I have.

Yeah, I know...that's not very specialized of me....on the other hand, the ability to crank out X troops (where X is however cities I have), and have them all well trained from the get-go, means I can go from having almost no army to being armed to the teeth with GOOD troops at the drop of a hat....an ability, I would argue, that's worth its weight in hammers...

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

One more thought on specialization.....

If I said to you....make sure every city is working at least a few high food tiles (farms, specials, etc), to be able to sustain your population, everybody (whether you were a proponent of specialization or not) would nod and agree. Food is good. Every city needs it.

If I said to you....make sure every city has at least SOME production so that it can at least provide for itself the basics that it needs, everyone would nod and agree that this is right and proper. Hammers are good. Every city needs them.

We all agree that gold is important, and given the above two statements, why is it such a stretch to make the same generalized statement about gold...that every city should at least be able to pay its own way, and thus, the monies generated from your commerce city are truly and 100% PROFITS that can drive the Empire as a whole?

I contend the three statements are all really the same thing. Thus if one is true, all are true.

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Vel,

I've had cities that produced zero, or very nearly zero, gold (and very, very little commerce in general) deep into the game. This was due to the fact that I was running between 90 and 100% science. I had been lucky enough to convert every city on my continent (all of mine + 2 other civs) to my religion. My holy city w/shrine was taking care of my expenses, allowing me to mostly run 100% science. I had two cities that were set up as production centers and thus produced no gold, and a pittance of beakers.

This worked well. The rest of my cities were powerhouse commerce cities, due to the financial trait, the fact that they were all coastal, had harbors, and were benifiting from the Colossus. Plus some cottages, of course. Meanwhile, my two barracks cities were producing enough troops to keep me relatively safe - safe enough to smack down the Aztec mini-rush that came my way.

Eventually, yes, one of my two non-commerce cities built a market, for happiness reasons. The other never got past size 5 (I love tundra & ice, yes I do!), so that wasn't an issue.

As you've said, it's situational. Sometimes I see a city and just know it's never gonna be much of a commerce center. I'm usually fine with that, since I continue to favor production over commerce a bit - production allows you to build things and ultimately you need to be able to build things to win. Neglecting one or the other, however, will get you into serious trouble, as it should.

-Arrian

p.s. The Mongols sure can beat down a civ or two... but ugh, they're not really well set up to consolidate their gains. Exp/Agg was the wrong choice for me - I had tons of health and not nearly enough happiness... I think I need either Org/Agg or Fin/Agg.

[Blake]

I've been playing around with hammerless cities a bit. As in pure cottage-cheese reclaimed jungle type stuff, or fishing villages. No hammers at all beyond the city plot.

The idea is to run slavery until Suffrage. Only pop-rush essential stuff, lighthouse+granary+library, maybe troops.
Beeline for Communism after Liberalism, build the Kremlin then poprush Courthouses, Banks, Universities etc. The Kremlin makes the whip really powerful, it's still better to buy than whip given the choice, but Communism comes so much earlier than Democracy if you go hardcore for Liberalism (and are pursuing a groundpounder strategy of Grenaders and cannons rather than Calvary).

Come suffrage, the cottages give far more "virtual-hammers" than mines would. A financial civs grassland hills cottage - 1f,2p,8c - at kremlin coin-hammer exchange rates that's 1f,7.3p - a grassland mine is only 1f,4h - in other words, a cottage provides almost twice as much extra "building power" than a mine. Even without the Kremlin it's still 1f,4.7p . Even non-financial, non-kremlin, it's 1f, 4.3p - still better than a mine.
Rushbuying is powerful.

Ofcourse until you can draft it's nessecary to have a hammer rich city for primary troop production, while the commerce cities piss their lives away building stuff at an abysmal rate, waiting for the day of Suffrage...

Isn't this game great? Even rules of thumbs have a whole load of exceptions. Wonders, Civics, Tech Paths can completely change game dynamics.

[Velociryx]

Total agreement 'bout the situational nature of any build. Just too many variables involved to say "always x, and then always y." That kind of reasoning is great for generating rules of thumb, but few, if any such statements will wind up being true absolutely all the time.

There's absolutely no doubt that a tendency toward specialization will improve your Empire...I guess I just have a bit of a different opinion about what that means and what it entails.

Despite the power of specialization, it's still a foregone conclusion that all cities need food. No food, no pop. No pop, no nothing. Likewise, production. I just expand this truism to include the "other" resource in the game...gold.

It sounds like our "specialization" runs along similar paths, excepting that I tend toward "multi-role cities" where you, DeepO, and others tend toward more stratified cities, and they both work (I can now crush Monarch like a beer can, and I don't specialize nearly to the level that you two do...or rather, I do, but go about it very differently, it seems).

The work I've been doing with the MRC reveals a vast flexibility that plays to the strengths of the land, while reaping most of the benefits of specialization, AND it allows me to reconfigure all my cities on the fly to a new area of specialization, as-needed, meaning that I can respond to any in-game condition that arises, setting my cities to be commercial/science giants during times of peace, and solid production centers when needs be. That kind of flexibility is notably absent in cities that are highly specialized toward one particular resource.

From a hammers spent perspective, it's certainly CHEAPER to go the highly specialized route, but not necessarily more profitable/productive. If maximum efficiency in all hammers spent is the goal, then of course, the highly specialized approach is superior, but the end result is not necessarily so (there's a tradeoff to be had...the highly specialized approach will yield greater returns for the hammers spent, while the MRC approach will yield greater TOTAL returns, but at the expense of additional up-front outlays). Both work well, and that means that players have options....always a good thing...

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Isn't this game great? Even rules of thumbs have a whole load of exceptions. Wonders, Civics, Tech Paths can completely change game dynamics.



-=Vel=-

[Blake]

It has to be said, that I sometimes specialize and sometimes don't. In some cases it's impossible to specialize, what do you do if hills are very scattered and there are no clustered food resources?

Specializing is one of those opportunistic things. You see a city (site) with a river, floodplains and 2 food specials. GPP pump. A city with some horses, a food special and a load of hills, unit/wonder pump. But sometimes you just get a whole lot of samey terrain that basically requires building generic cities.

So even the decision on specialization or not is part of the meta-strategy of the game, there is no "right" way, the degree of specialization which will give the best returns depends on many factors.

edit: I also have to argue about specializing being "cheaper", this is only true of buildings which have no ongoing costs at all. When it comes to terraforming, you should account for national wonders. Why build a cottage at the Heroic Epic city?

[Arrian]

Hmm, that's a pretty powerful endorsement of rushbuying/poprushing, Blake.

I gotta use the whip more. I've barely touched it so far...

-Arrian

[Ithkul2]

Vel, great reading. I've read the first page of this thread and parts of the rest. I'm currently experimenting with the Mongolia-Keshik (Horse Archer) specific approach on noble. I own easily. But monark is causing my some troble.

I load untill i get the horses i need in my mail city or by taking a close enemy city with horses. Asmuming you have the horses, can you give a tech line, producion line, etc that you would go for?

My current game i rushed horses, archery and made barracks. I saved up a few Keshik while scouting my closest target. I keept taking cities untill i was forced down to a 50% research and bullied tech from my now two weak opponents. By taking cities I got budism and hiduism main cities. I also tok the stonehedge that cultured the newly captured cities. =)

Later game I rushed Cavelry and keep taking cities using wonder to lower the maintainance. 50% of my city squares are cottages. This works so fine that i can keep 90% reseach atm. I hit cavelry 13th-14th century (noble).

I KNOW that mongolia have great potential, not because they are strong end game, but because they can make themself super dominant early game. the +50% granary production and the faster horse archer really dominates and expand the early game.

Vel, experiment with Mongolia on higher level of dif. And give me a report will you? Dominate !! good luck =)

P.S. Dont be afraid of going below 50% reseach early game, put on some granary then keep taking cities. your newly conqured workers will make cottages to support your growing boarders.

[teaster]

New poprush fan here,

I had done very little poprushing before but in my current game I started alone on a continent with a long windy river and a LOT of flood plains. My first 3 cities are mostly flood plains and hills, very few trees I have basically 2 terrain improvements, mines and cottages, great money making cities with good production and fast population growth. Unfortunately all 3 of them are under an orangey haze with green sickly faces so I've been using poprushing to keep the populations down. It turns some great moneymaking cities into good production cities as well.

Some day I hope to be able to get enough health improvements to keep them healthy then I can switch to a civic allowing rushbuying to spend some of the cash instead of the people.