Medieval units in industrial age!

[Strategist83]

It is 1775. Both I and the AI opponents are still tugging around with knights, longbowmen and catapults. Next to them are workers in overalls and cranes at the stone digging site.

This happens in most of my games, and I would like to know why. Obviously, my research has been too slow somehow - but I do not see what I could be doing wrong. I invest as much as possible in research and trade technologies with the opponents as long as their demands are not downright outrageous. I tend to acquire all the technologies - there are few I skip.

Islam is almost always founded during the medieval age, and knights rarely show up until I and the opponents are on the doorstep to the Renaissance.

What am I doing wrong?

[GeoModder]

Era switches happen whenever the first tech of the next era is researched. And since a beeline for a "higher" tech is quite easily, it happens that you still have medieval garb on your (battle) units while the graphics already upgrade for the more peacefull/economic part of your empire.

Solutions are to or have a huge amount of cash ready to upgrade your units, or first research all the techs of your current era. Note that the AI doesn't feel inclined to do the latter.

[Strategist83]

In other words, it is bad design on the programmers' part. I thought the game was supposed to be semi-historically correct?

Do others experience the same or does technology follow the timeline better?

[Bogdanovist]

Don't get too concerned about your progress matching historically progress in terms of the game date, as long as your keeping up with the AI your okay.

In terms of researching quicker in general, I found in my first couple of civ4 games I wasn't using enough cottages or great people. I always felt I needed all the population working the fields and couldn't seem to spare land for cottages, seeing other improvements as better. But these two new features are extremely important. In my latest game I'm using heaps of cottages and getting a lot of great scientists and other GP and it makes a HUGE difference. So my suggestion to rip through the tech tree quicker is to built cottages and work em up to towns ASAP and try and get a few early great scientists for those nice academies in your core cities.

There is much better and clearer advice in the strategy forum, so be sure to check that out.

good luck!

edit: just saw your second post. No it is not bad design. Every game will be different, sometimes you have riflemen in 1000AD, sometimes your don't get them till the 20th century. Generally though, things progress in a roughly historical way.

But whoever said Civ was supposed to be historically accurate? You are re-writing history, not playing it out the same way every time

[Strategist83]

My experience is that you will generally discover technologies much later than what is 'realistic', even though I tend to play with focus on cottages and research. You might have riflemen in 1000 AD, but then you would be severely lacking in other fields.

All I can say is assaulting modern cities with catapults is not my idea of fun. How are you even supposed to reach the 'future' technologies before the game ends in 2150 (or whatever) if your soldiers are still wearing chain armour in 1900? I am not saying I want the game to be historically accurate at all, but what I am experiencing is just downright ridiculous.

[gilfan]

I've never had a problem with being significantly behind the tech curve... often I'm well ahead of it. (I play on noble or prince). Many times I've had tanks in the 1800s. A couple tips...

Farms suck. Only build the minimum number of farms required to keep your city growing. Usually I build a lot of farms at first, to get the city up to size 8-12, then convert to other terrain improvements.

Windmills rock. Ok, they are not better than mines, they are only equally as good as mines, but they give food. Every windmill you build is one fewer farm you have to build. And as we have established, farms suck.

Cottages are the best terrain improvement. They can eventually give up to 7 commerce. HUGE boost to tax generation and/or science.



Personally, I go all cottages and universal sufferage, then use gold to rush production on all my buildings. If you don't go universal sufferage, you miss out on the 1 hammer from towns. You could also go with workshops or watermills for hammer production, but only if you're running state property... with state property those tile improvements are as good as towns, without it they are not.

[marvinkosh]

There are buttons in the city screen which can be used to emphasise research, commerce, and production. These will affect both the distribution of specialists and the working of tiles. When you have enough cities you may find that focusing on these will give a boost where you need it most.

One thing to note especially is that certain resources give a boost to gold when an improvement is built on them, so in the initial land grab you want to get your claws on those even if you can't make use of them at the time.

Building cottages along the banks of river cities makes it somewhat easier to develop commerce. You will still need to farm some of the land in order to spread irrigation and feed your city, but even then you get a +1 gold in those tiles. Unlike with cottages, this will not improve over time, but them's the breaks.

Founding a religion or two and spreading it around can net you a lot of gold, while this doesn't directly speed your research (any earnings made from religion are added after your taxes have been split the three ways) it does let you run research at a higher rate.

Finally, avoid getting into wars which do not help you build your empire. Always maintain a strong defensive posture though, in many ways this helps to stave off conflict until you are ready to go on the offensive. During peactime, make use of at least one of your cities to turn out replacement defenders when you can build better units. This ties up some of your production but it can be cheaper than upgrading units, and it means you will be ready if the AI decides to turn out an army of its latest units. More importantly, when the AI does decide to go to war, you will probably have fresh defenders approaching completion.

[Strategist83]

But it seems to me you NEED a buckload of farms to get the city up to a reasonable size. If you max out cottages you will slow or even halt growth. Should you not always aim to get the city as large as possible?

Still, I believe you are on to something. In the above mentioned game I did indeed focus on farms - but only to sustain a large population (I had 10M citizens while opponents averaged 2.5M)

BTW, I believe cottages (towns) can yield a max income of four gold, not seven. That the tile yields more is due to it having a base commerce value to start with.

[marvinkosh]

Towns gain bonuses later on in the game when you discover Printing Press and if you enable the Free Speech civic.

Flood plains are one way to produce enough food and still have ample commerce, but of course you need to invest more in health. The other way is to settle a city near to a resource which gives a hefty food bonus.

Bear in mind, you only need two food per population point, and many squares can be coaxed into producing that much. So what you need to work on is making sure there is enough excess to sustain growth. Eventually, no matter what you do, you will reach a point where increasing a city's population (by creating more food-producing improvements) will make it difficult to produce anything or generate a worthwhile amount of gold. As long as you have other cities that can continue to grow, or you produce more settler units using this city which cannot grow any further, you'll be fine. Sometimes, when increasing a city's population would result in unhappiness or unhealthiness, it may actually be desirable to click on the 'Avoid Growth' button and build something to counter these dangers.

[gilfan]

Originally posted by Strategist83
But it seems to me you NEED a buckload of farms to get the city up to a reasonable size. If you max out cottages you will slow or even halt growth. Should you not always aim to get the city as large as possible?

Still, I believe you are on to something. In the above mentioned game I did indeed focus on farms - but only to sustain a large population (I had 10M citizens while opponents averaged 2.5M)

BTW, I believe cottages (towns) can yield a max income of four gold, not seven. That the tile yields more is due to it having a base commerce value to start with.

For the vast majority of the game, a windmill provides just as much extra food as a farm, i.e. +1. Only with biology does the farm give +2, and by the time you get to biology, the game is nearly over.

If you have the collector's edition with the fold out tech tree, look in the orange section with all the terrain improvements and what they do for you.

When evaluating a tile improvement, I count 1 food as 1 point, 1 hammer as 1 point, and 2 commerce as 1 point. When you use gold to hurry production, it takes 2.5 gold per hammer, but I round down because commerce/gold is much more flexible. You can use it for tech, culture, gold, or to instantly purchase any building at your convenience.


These are max values, with all technologies

Farms 2 food (biology) 2 points

Towns 1 hammer, 7 commerce (universal sufferage, printing press, free speech) 3.5 points

Windmills 1 food, 1 hammer, 2 commerce (replacable parts, electricity) 3 points

Watermills 1 food, 2 hammers, 2 commerce (state property, replaceable parts, electricity) 4 points

Workshops 0 food, 3 hammers (state property, guilds, replaceable parts) 3 points



I didn't say no farms, I said just enough to keep the city growing. Like I said, I usually build several farms and turn on max food, to get the city up to size 8-12, then replace some of the farms with other improvements. I set it up so that the city will max out at size 20-24, which means a max food potential of 40-something. For me, this usually means 2-4 farms per city


Trust me, I do this all the time, and I'm usually WAAAAAY ahead of the other civs in technology. It also helps if you take a financial civ. Personally I use the inca's a lot, because they start with Mysticism, which makes it easy to found a religion immediately, and their other trait is aggressive, which is nice for your military

[Tommar]

What difficulty level are you playing?

I'm a builder type, and have found that in all Civ games so far (and Alpha Centauri), I'll stay ahead of the NPC's if I can learn a tech in 5 turns or less.

Until I can learn how to do that, I don't increase the difficulty of the game. (There's an odd slow down on tech research about the time you get to Theology and Metal Casings, but once you get Metal Casings, it's smooth sailing from there for a builder. I try to avoid getting the Oracle too soon for that reason. It gives you a free tech, and I don't want it to give me a free tech that I could have achieved easily without it.)

If you are a builder, and wish to be left alone to build, just make sure that your military rank is 3 or higher. NPC's generally will avoid messing with you even if you are overwhelming their territory culturally, but if they do declare war on you, it's generally pretty easy to defend or gear up your war machine, if you've kept up your military.

If your military rank drops to 5 or below, it's like having a "Kick me" sign on your back.