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**Velociryx** · December 22, 2005, 09:40

Didn't see this right away...was writing a new strat essay...copying and pasting to my desktop (shhh...at work...don't tell nobody), and will whip up some answers for ya in a bit!

-=Vel=-

**Quillan** · December 22, 2005, 10:07

My thoughts on your questions:

1) Hit F2 to bring up the financial advisor. It won't outright tell you how many units you can have before paying for them, but it will tell you how much you are currently paying for them. If you build them a few at a time and stop once the maintenance cost begins you'll have the current number. It seems to change depending on circumstances: I know Vassalage gives you 1 extra free unit for every point of population in all your cities, but I don't know what the base is.

2) Build as much stuff that produces culture as you can. Size of the city doesn't matter, except in how many squares are being worked. If their size 2 is culturally dominating your size 8 city, then either their city has been there a lot longer (it takes time for the culture to influence the contested areas over to your side) or it's outproducing you in culture. You need to produce more culture per turn than they do.

3) This is the most complex and intricate feature of this game, IMO. The biggest single thing you can do is adopt the same state religion as the neighbors you want to be on good terms with. This should work well for you, as you say you don't normally found religions. When it spreads into your civ, adopt it as the state religion, and spread it around to all your other cities. As to civics, Organized Religion is expensive, but any city that has the state religion in it will gain a 25% production bonus when producing a building. Theocracy is cheaper, it will prevent anyone from spreading a religion other than your state religion within your empire, and it will give 2 bonus XP to every unit you recruit (including naval units). Pacifism is only good if you are trying to build lots of great people, and its way to early in the game for you to even think about Free Religion.

4) Like so much else in this game, my answer is "It depends". Don't scoff at gold, if you've got a lot of it, upgrade your older units into modern ones so you don't have to spend time building new ones. It's also a good way to keep experienced units around, but I understand a unit will drop down to 10XP when upgraded if it had more. A large gold reserve will also enable you to run at a deficit for a bit.

5) Look on this forum for a thread titled "Great Profits (Prophets)" for some ideas on this subject.

6) I don't know any formula. I just play it by ear. In the long run, most people are able to catch up eventually. I've never dropped below 50% science myself, but others have said they've dropped to 30% or even lower and been able to build back up.

**Kinjiru** · December 22, 2005, 10:08

While I won't pretend to have mastered any of the deep strategies, one thing did jump out at me...

Helio wrote:
"I've no idea what religious Civics to use in this game... I tend to stay a pagan heathen for eons because I don't see much value to the others due to cost..."

You might want to switch to Organized Religion as soon as you adopt/found a religion. The cost isn't overly burdensome and you get a nice boost to your domestic (non-military) production.

How does this benefit you? Turn-advantage.

If you are building theatres, libraries and courthouses, as you seem to indicate, then getting those things finished 25% faster nets you a pretty heft set of 'free production' turns. Certainly enough time to pop out a few more military units.

Now, as to how many units you might be needing...
As you have found out, two per city is far from enough. How many you really need depends on many factors.

One thing to check is to bring up the statistics screen and see where you rank on the soldiers line. If you are near the bottom of the list, guess what, you are a target. If you are near the top, gues what, you are a threat. So, like Goldilocks, try to fall in the middle.

Second, if your cities are close together and you have road networks, you can probably get away with a few less units than you would otherwise need. You can shift units around to meet any threat.

Third, if you have enough cities to have an inner core and outer bailey (for lack of a better term), then you can have fewer units in your core (1 or 2 per city) and more at your frontiers (at least 3).

Fourth, have a catapult or two handy. When you see one of those stacks approaching, attack with your 'pults. Three or four swordsmen are far less threatening when they have their strength reduced by 30-50%.

My suggestion to you is to play your next game completely differently. Do not build any buildings you do not absolutely need (a theatre or library so your borders will expand, possibly a temple). Just build units and go on a rampage. Once you understand how they game looks to someone going the military route, you will have a better idea of how to defend against invasions.

**Velociryx** · December 22, 2005, 10:18

My game has taken a step in the right direction. On Prince, I'm very competitive, sometimes dominant, up through the Renaissance era. Credit the understanding of Bronzeworking/chop strat, plus realizing over-expansion costs money.

Quite right...while there are a number of early game approaches, BronzeWorking and Pop-n-Chop is ALWAYS what I recommend that folks who are struggling start with because a) it's relatively easier to master and b) there's a clear correlation between what you're doing in-game and your rise in the power chart. Makes it very easy to see how what you are doing is impacting the game.

Now what seems to be happening to me is around the Ren period, I retrograde in my placings - this surprised me a lot in my most recent game because I was building lots of wonders, but I had perhaps 10 cities (on a large map), and finally war broke out and I couldn't keep pace, which again I found odd.

There's the trouble, right there. Your Civ is talking to you, but you're too enamoured with the Wonder-Chase to listen. Too much production tied up in Wonders, and not enough time spent focusing on the fundamentals, but we'll delve deeper into your post to see what gives.

1) How do I know how many units I can support before gold is used?

This varies with difficulty level and the total size of your population (it will grow as your cities mature). Best way to find out what the current situation is, is to use the expense summary (I'm at work, and I forget what the "F" shortcut key is, but will check when I get home and edit this post) --somebody else said F2...see above! It'll detail for you what your current military expenses are (if any). In the experiments I ran on Noble level, I found that with a single (small...less than size 6) city, I could field something like 14 units before starting to feel the pinch of maintenance, and when it began, it was something at or near 0.5gpt per unit over and above. Also note that you will start feeling maintenance costs sooner, the more troops you keep outside your borders.

2) How do I maximize my own ability to culturally spread my border, particularly in the face of a creative civ up against my own (I only play Germany/America right now as a 'control' mechanism for improving my game). I know about the Great Artist "culture bomb" but I can't figure out why Pop 2 cities are dominating the border of my pop 8 city that has a courthouse, theater, and library...

With regards to culture, size don't really matter. I can have size one city with a great artist assigned there as a super specialist (12 culture per turn), make the one pop point a specialist, rush buy a temple and a library and be WAY outstripping your developed city in culture per turn. It's even worse if I'm creative and you're not. It's even WORSE if I've got a bunch of cities exerting cultural influence over the same tiles and you've got just the one. Only way to push it back is to rush every cultural improvement in place that you can, assign some artist specialists, build some national wonders that pump culture at the border, and/or build additional cities in that region specifically for that purpose.

Alternately, you can invade and raze some of the offending cities to remove pressure.

3) How do I manage long-term relations with foreign powers to not present myself as a threat/target for attack?

Three part answer here:

1) To get people to play nice, you should focus on adopting their religion, and making trades with them where they get an advantage (sell them an old tech for real cheap if you're ahead, or if you're on par, offer them an expensive tech of yours for a lesser tech of theirs...they REALLY like that). Also (you mention this later in your post), when the AI demands something from you, don't give in, but DO give them a 5-10 gold tribute...keeps them happy(ier) and is cheap insurance. Good use for that gold, too...

2) To get people to see you as a hard target, you gotta use the hell out of the f9 screen. Make sure you're not on the bottom tier, militarily. If you are, then you need to stop all the fancy schmancy projects you're involved with and build military units. LOTS of military units. Keep doing that until you ain't last (shoot for dead center of the pack, or slightly higher).

3) (sort of a hybrid of the other two). Best situation is to pay the MOST attention to what your immediate neighbors are doing. It's way more important to get on the good side of the folks you share a border with than someone half a world away, because if you are attacked, the folks are your border are way more threatening than the guy who can maybe land 4-6 units on your doorstep every 20+ turns, so if you're gonna make a diplomatic push, do it with the guys next door!

In particular, I'm finding that I THINK I have enough military defense, but then I get a war declared on me, and a massive amount of enemy troops from a podunk, way-behind Civ smashes into my border...

This dilemma plays in with (1) above.

The F9 screen don't lie. Don't listen to your gut. Listen to the f9 screen. If it says you're bottom tier, then YOU ARE IN DANGER. Build troops til you're not.

I'm also generaly curious what your "rules of thumb" are for maintaining defense per city (I try one ranged unit with FS, plus one "spearmen/pikemen" because the enemy uses horses so much. But two units per city has become woefully inadequate...

City Defenses: 2 garrisons per city on the coast. 1 garrison per city in the safe middle. 3 garrisons per city on the border with another civ, no matter how much they like you.

Fast movers strung out between all cities on the coast (1 unit shared between two cities), for augmenting defense. Double this on the border of another civ.

Attack stacks at the border of neighboring civs (typically 4 mainline attackers, 2 fast attackers, and 2 siege weapons per stack)....as many stacks as you can afford.

Also, I'm pretty heavily disappointed in the naval combat units (galley) because you really seem to me to have no way of increasing your odds above a standard 50/50 - takes so long to get a naval combat unit enough experience to make a difference that they rarely live beyond one or two attacks, unless you're willing to devote a lot of production to having a standing navy, which I'm usually reluctant to do, but in wars, I'm always finding enemies dropping troops somewhere that they can get access to by boat behind my "front lines"... argh, you see the pattern here.

Agreed. Naval combat sucks. Still, at least *some* naval presence is important. Recommend not abandoning it completely.

I've no idea what religious Civics to use in this game... I tend to stay a pagan heathen for eons because I don't see much value to the others due to cost...

Organized Religion in times of peace (this assumes that most of your cities have your state religion in them). 25% discount on buildings more than makes up for the cost.

Theocracy in times of war. The extra experience points (esp. when coupled with a barracks and vassalage) will see you cranking out MEAN troops.

Free Religion when you're so strong that you don't need the good neighbor bonus for like-religioned civs.

4) Is a great merchant used well in making a trade route across to a far off capital? It's just coin - something I find little value for in this game until I can adopt Suffrage. Having "too much coin" has become a problem for me, because my rat-bastard greedy enemies decide to harass me for my surplus, and I say no, and then we end up at war, and I lose those... (and in Civ 3 I was such a master warmonger - surprises me how different it is this time around). So with my "surplus" I just tend to upgrade my military units as often as I can so i don't have the surplus for them to extort me with...

No such thing as too much cash. If you have big surplusses of cash, it's cos you don't have enough military (which you don't....see your posts above). Your gpt on the main screen IS the barometer for civ health. Those merchants are great for a one-time kick of cash, but I much prefer adding them to my cities for the gpt and food!

5) Is a great prophet really all that useful? I had 3 great prophets in my last game, and I didn't start any religion myself until Islam (so I built the Islamic building in the founding city - not sure what use that was, my lost war happened shortly thereafter). Is it possible to send your great prophet to the other religions' founding cities of your neighbors? Is it beneficial? (I would think not) So then, if you're not founding religions, are great prophets worth much more than an instigator for a golden age, or a means to raise the values of a city by having the prophet join? These seem like the weakest of the great people (at least in my non-religion-founding approach)

Prophets...or for that matter, ANY GP....they're all the bomb. I seldom cash them in for tech, much preferring to use them to build their special building (academy, religious founding building), or to add them to a key city as a super specialist. They're simply amazing.

6) How do I determine if early expansion is going to be too costly - I've played several games where I COULD expand more, but didn't because of the gold problem. Is there any formula that anyone has come up with? I'm "winging it" right now, looking at my bank account and the drain/surplus effects...

I don't know that anybody's worked out the precise forumla at this point, but when I'm expanding, I check maintenance costs on all my cities after each new founding. Good barometer....tells you very quickly which direction you need to be heading in (further expansion or consolidation). If I can afford it, I always expand first, consolidate second, but of course, your mileage may vary. On Monarch and above, I find that about all I can do, cost effectively, is get a second city out and then develop both, shoot for two more....grow like that. On Prince....I ran as close to ICS as I could and only had a problem when I hit 18 cities. Anything less than that, I found to be manageable with minimal infrastructure.

-=Vel=-

**Proteus_MST** · December 22, 2005, 10:29

Re: Little details I can't master

Originally posted by heliodorus04
My game has taken a step in the right direction. On Prince, I'm very competitive, sometimes dominant, up through the Renaissance era. Credit the understanding of Bronzeworking/chop strat, plus realizing over-expansion costs money.

Now what seems to be happening to me is around the Ren period, I retrograde in my placings - this surprised me a lot in my most recent game because I was building lots of wonders, but I had perhaps 10 cities (on a large map), and finally war broke out and I couldn't keep pace, which again I found odd.

Anyhow, here are my little nuisances I'd like some assistance with:

1) How do I know how many units I can support before gold is used?

It´s in the financial advisor screen.
Hover your mouse pointer over unit costs (AFAIK maintenance) and it says how many units are free.
You can also hover your mouse pointer over much more values in many of the screens of the game to get more informations (for example in the city screen)

Originally posted by heliodorus04
2) How do I maximize my own ability to culturally spread my border, particularly in the face of a creative civ up against my own (I only play Germany/America right now as a 'control' mechanism for improving my game). I know about the Great Artist "culture bomb" but I can't figure out why Pop 2 cities are dominating the border of my pop 8 city that has a courthouse, theater, and library...

If they use a great artist as culture bomb, 6000 culture ppoint are instantly added to the city, no matter what size it is. As even well developed cities need some time to amass 6.000 culture points it´s only natural that a small city can dominate a big city if a culture bomb is used (but the effect diminishes over time, as, unlike the small city your big city produces new culture points per turn and so at some turn it will have more culture points than the small city (unless tha AI player uses another great artist or uses the time to build much more cultural buildings within the small city).
Btw. if, as mentioned, you also play germany then you´re able to take a creative leader. Just take Fredrick, he is creative/philosophical

Originally posted by heliodorus04
3) How do I manage long-term relations with foreign powers to not present myself as a threat/target for attack?

Choose your friends and enemys wisely and don´t try to be friends with everyone.
If you have chosen someone to be your friend, don´t make trade treaties or open borders with civs he doesn´t like and try to bee in good terms with those civs he does like.
Also try to make defensive treaties with civs you trust enough.

Originally posted by heliodorus04
In particular, I'm finding that I THINK I have enough military defense, but then I get a war declared on me, and a massive amount of enemy troops from a podunk, way-behind Civ smashes into my border...

This dilemma plays in with (1) above.

I'm also generaly curious what your "rules of thumb" are for maintaining defense per city (I try one ranged unit with FS, plus one "spearmen/pikemen" because the enemy uses horses so much. But two units per city has become woefully inadequate...

I´d use especially strong garrisons at cities which can be reached by the enemy, i.e. cities which lie near foreign borders or which are located at the coast. In contrast (at least against the AI) you don´t need to fortify those cities which lie in the midst of your realm (i.e. can´t be reached by enemy forces within one turn) this much.
It would also be nice to havbe mobile forces (knights, cavalry, tanks and the like) stationed at strategic locations, ready to reach and support any of the cities mentioned above within one turn.

Originally posted by heliodorus04

Also, I'm pretty heavily disappointed in the naval combat units (galley) because you really seem to me to have no way of increasing your odds above a standard 50/50 - takes so long to get a naval combat unit enough experience to make a difference that they rarely live beyond one or two attacks, unless you're willing to devote a lot of production to having a standing navy, which I'm usually reluctant to do, but in wars, I'm always finding enemies dropping troops somewhere that they can get access to by boat behind my "front lines"... argh, you see the pattern here.

Pity, you have to decide what you want, not being able to be reached by sea or having smaller units costs by maintaining only a small navy. If you have reached the necessary technology, it is very useful to have at least 1-2 shipbuilding cities equipped with a drydock as this not only halves the production costs but also gives each ship produced there a bonus of 4 XP. Along with a civic or wonder that gives you additional XP this will lead to ships having already level 3 (i.e. 2 promotions) right after they´re built.

Originally posted by heliodorus04

I've no idea what religious Civics to use in this game... I tend to stay a pagan heathen for eons because I don't see much value to the others due to cost...

I´d always use organized religion (before I switch to free religion as the 25% production bonus for each city with your state religion is really useful.

Originally posted by heliodorus04
4) Is a great merchant used well in making a trade route across to a far off capital? It's just coin - something I find little value for in this game until I can adopt Suffrage. Having "too much coin" has become a problem for me, because my rat-bastard greedy enemies decide to harass me for my surplus, and I say no, and then we end up at war, and I lose those... (and in Civ 3 I was such a master warmonger - surprises me how different it is this time around). So with my "surplus" I just tend to upgrade my military units as often as I can so i don't have the surplus for them to extort me with...

It depends on the time and situation. If you don´t need a lot of money at once and are very early in the game it might often pay off to use the great merchant as super specialist.

Originally posted by heliodorus04
5) Is a great prophet really all that useful? I had 3 great prophets in my last game, and I didn't start any religion myself until Islam (so I built the Islamic building in the founding city - not sure what use that was, my lost war happened shortly thereafter). Is it possible to send your great prophet to the other religions' founding cities of your neighbors? Is it beneficial? (I would think not) So then, if you're not founding religions, are great prophets worth much more than an instigator for a golden age, or a means to raise the values of a city by having the prophet join? These seem like the weakest of the great people (at least in my non-religion-founding approach)

AFAIK you cannot use the great prophet to found holy cities for other nations (maybe only if you´re allied to the civ), but of course you could move him into the territory of the other civ and then gift him to this civ (which would enable this civ to use the great prophet to found the holy city. Is it beneficial? Of course, it is really beneficial to the other civ

But I doubt that you would benefit from this (unless you´re allied to the civ) as gifting units doesn´t enhance your lrelations to a civ. You might only benefit from this indirectly if you´re a close friend to the other civ, as it enables the other civ to become more competitive (by the money it gains by the holy city)
If I have all holy cities I can build I would use the great prophet to either discover a religious tech or to be a suiper specialist in one of my cities.

Originally posted by heliodorus04
6) How do I determine if early expansion is going to be too costly - I've played several games where I COULD expand more, but didn't because of the gold problem. Is there any formula that anyone has come up with? I'm "winging it" right now, looking at my bank account and the drain/surplus effects...

Thanks for reading my long post...

AFAIK there is a Thread in the strategy article section of either civfanatics or apolyton which covers the increasing city maintenance dependant on the number of cities

**ghen** · December 22, 2005, 10:44

Re: Little details I can't master

Now what seems to be happening to me is around the Ren period, I retrograde in my placings - this surprised me a lot in my most recent game because I was building lots of wonders, but I had perhaps 10 cities (on a large map)

Around this time in the game is when I start forging big alliances and taking on whoever is the biggest opponent by diplomacy first and military second. You need to make sure your military is as strong as everyone else to have effective diplomacy threats though. You can see this in the F9 info screen.

1) How do I know how many units I can support before gold is used?

I don't really know to tell you the truth, but it seems to be somewhere around 1 or 2 units for each city and then a 5-10 unit army.

2) How do I maximize my own ability to culturally spread my border, particularly in the face of a creative civ up against my own (I only play Germany/America right now as a 'control' mechanism for improving my game). I know about the Great Artist "culture bomb" but I can't figure out why Pop 2 cities are dominating the border of my pop 8 city that has a courthouse, theater, and library...

Cultural fights are done by culture per turn more than total culture amounts. Once you get the 8 squares around your city and hopefully the whole fat cross, your cultural influence will degrade.. so tiles that are in another civs fat cross will have more of that civs culture. If its really bugging you, take their city

I used to fight culture wars, trying everything I could to move the border 1 square.. but its just not worth it. You waste so much time worrying about it.

3) How do I manage long-term relations with foreign powers to not present myself as a threat/target for attack?

Build your military and give gifts. A strong military will make them think twice about attacking. Also, keep a few extra units in the cities by aggressive civs, or those that are bigger and hate you.
To make your friends like you more, give them good gifts. New techs that you've just researched and can't get anything for. Also allow them to ask for help/tributes. You always get bonus points for helping or giving tribute, so its totally worth it

The AI will always have an ungoldy stack when it attacks you, and it might even take a city.. just be sure you can either limp away from the first round, or are able to take the city back before it stops revolting and gets defensive bonuses. Probably about 80% of the time the AI attacks me on monarch I loose a city, but my military is strong enough to take it back by the end of the war. Often I will do everything possible to bring allies into the fight including give away 3 techs at a time to goad war.

I'm also generaly curious what your "rules of thumb" are for maintaining defense per city (I try one ranged unit with FS, plus one "spearmen/pikemen" because the enemy uses horses so much. But two units per city has become woefully inadequate...

I keep warriors and archers in my inner cities just so they don't get fearful -2 happiness. If a city is near another civ (within 3-4 movement turns) it needs more military of course, but usually I won't have enough army to do that either. Keeping a catapult or artillery in each city on the border is really nice because you can suicide it on the enemy's stack and lower 5 or 6 unit healths by hopefully enough to defend.

Also, I'm pretty heavily disappointed in the naval combat units (galley) because you really seem to me to have no way of increasing your odds above a standard 50/50 - takes so long to get a naval combat unit enough experience to make a difference that they rarely live beyond one or two attacks, unless you're willing to devote a lot of production to having a standing navy, which I'm usually reluctant to do, but in wars, I'm always finding enemies dropping troops somewhere that they can get access to by boat behind my "front lines"... argh, you see the pattern here.

The trick here is more boats, and have them travel in stacks of 2 or 3 to suicide attack the transporting ships. You can tell the ones with units because the units are listed with the ship, if the ship has no units with it and can't bombard (sometimes even if it can) I just let it go. Work boats are cheap enough to build and don't take food. One boat per coastal city seems to be a good number for my games, unless you play archaepalagio maps in which you can use less of a navy once you own the seas.

I've no idea what religious Civics to use in this game... I tend to stay a pagan heathen for eons because I don't see much value to the others due to cost...

Organized religion is extremely expensive early. You have to really know how much money you'll be wasting and how many cities will benefit to make sure its worth it. If you're planning on building a ton of units, definitely switch to theocracy for the experience.. getting a second promotion over barracks is invaluable! But you're right.. if there's only or 2 cities with your state religion (or you switch religions just to make a friend) then staying pagan can sometimes be a good idea. You can really micromanage this with spiritual civs... They make the entire civics screen a ton of fun, plus if you found multiple religions you can switch from buddism to hindu to get the hindu city a good culture boost.. then switch back with no ill effects when your culture expands.

4) Is a great merchant used well in making a trade route across to a far off capital? It's just coin - something I find little value for in this game until I can adopt Suffrage. Having "too much coin" has become a problem for me, because my rat-bastard greedy enemies decide to harass me for my surplus, and I say no, and then we end up at war, and I lose those... (and in Civ 3 I was such a master warmonger - surprises me how different it is this time around). So with my "surplus" I just tend to upgrade my military units as often as I can so i don't have the surplus for them to extort me with...

Okay, there's three things at issue here.. Upgrading military units should be done sparingly because its cheaper to upgrade a unit with one big upgrade than 2 small ones. For example, upgrading a warrior->maceman is cheaper than warrior->axeman->maceman. So if you need some better diplomacy, or need the strength obviously, then upgrade.
Second is that you don't give in to other civs demands

Not only does it keep them from going to war and/or getting a negative diplomacy point but it uses the money to buy their happiness! "+1 You gave us tribute." is the same as any other +1

As long as they don't ask for an ungodly amount its ok by me.. 200g when you have 550 |+1 per turn | 70% research; is perfectly fine.
Third is how you actually manage to have alot of gold before sufferage. If I seem to be collecting gold I'll either up the research, build more military, or take an AI city and incur its expansion penalty.
A good way to get large sums of money is gamble on wonders and loose. If you don't ever try for an early wonder, your research will suffer later before you hit currency.

5) Is a great prophet really all that useful? I had 3 great prophets in my last game, and I didn't start any religion myself until Islam (so I built the Islamic building in the founding city - not sure what use that was, my lost war happened shortly thereafter). Is it possible to send your great prophet to the other religions' founding cities of your neighbors? Is it beneficial? (I would think not) So then, if you're not founding religions, are great prophets worth much more than an instigator for a golden age, or a means to raise the values of a city by having the prophet join? These seem like the weakest of the great people (at least in my non-religion-founding approach)

Well +2 hammer +5 coin is nothing to scoff at adding a super-specialist, but I usually build libraries and force scientists to work so I don't have that problem of too many prophets. As for religious buildings I only build the first 3. After that its not as big a deal and getting a free tech is more worthwhile.
Sending prophets to other civs would only benefit them, so the game doesn't allow it.

Basically its: 1) found one of the first 3 religious buildings, 2) see if the free tech is something that will definitely benefit you now rather than later 3) if its still early game, add the prophet to your best gold city (the one you're going to build market/bank in first, not neccessarily your capital unless you plan on using Mercantilism civic alot) and lastly 4) save for a golden age. Personally I don't like golden ages early unless you've over-expanded.

6) How do I determine if early expansion is going to be too costly - I've played several games where I COULD expand more, but didn't because of the gold problem. Is there any formula that anyone has come up with? I'm "winging it" right now, looking at my bank account and the drain/surplus effects...

I wing it too, I think thats better than some static formula for good land vs. # of cities :P Some times I never build a single settler the entire game and instead take other cities for my expansion. I do this when another civ's second city is extremely close to me and on a good spot.[/quote]

Thanks for reading my long post...

Its a pleasure

Plus hopefully I beat Vel!

edit: FART! I'm totally last.. thats what I get for helping customers

**Cort Haus** · December 22, 2005, 11:21

Re: Little details I can't master

Originally posted by heliodorus04
1) How do I know how many units I can support before gold is used?

The short answer (on Noble) is approximately

12 + (totalpop/4) .

This is rounded down and modified for vasselage, but otherwise approximately each 4 pop points in your empire can support 1 additional unit.

You are allowed 4 units outside your borders before paying away-from-home additional support costs, so going to war is much more expensive than staying at home.

The full answer is in this thread on CFC .

**Cort Haus** · December 22, 2005, 13:04

Originally posted by Velociryx
...
when the AI demands something from you, don't give in, but DO give them a 5-10 gold tribute...keeps them happy(ier) and is cheap insurance.

Hmmm, more of a cover note than a full insurance policy, methinks. I'm not so sure that digging in is always best for all demands, for all playstyles. I'm often making good friends overnight by paying early tribute and in these cases the investment has been worth every penny.

Rejecting a 'gimme' demand then flipping them a token pittance doesn't work in my experience. It's all to do with the ledgers.

Gifting gold or tech can get between +1 and +4 on the "our trades have been fair" ledger. I can't remember the exact name so I'll call it the Fair Trade ledger. Gifting paltry amounts of gold is unlikely to yield anything better than a short lived +1 on the Fair Trade ledger, if that, (and if it yields anymore it should be fixed as an exploit). I'm often gifting 2-300 beakers worth of old tech for nothing more than +1 or +2 - if anything at all. Large or repeated gifts can't get this higher than +4, as players trying to bribe their way to a UN win will have noted. Importantly, credit on this ledger decays over time - sometimes very quickly, so you are only buying a temporary diplo credit.

OTOH, paying tribute (or giving help) gets a permenant +1 on the Tribute ledger (or Help Ledger). This can be reduced or increased by refusing or complying with subsequent demands, but it's +1 diplo that will never decay on its own. Free gifts to the AI can never give you that kind of diplo gain. Its like a diplo super-specialist vs a one-off hit. Not only that, but in my experience, once I have paid tribute to a civ they usually don't ask again for a long time - if ever.

However, that +1 is just the start. There's also a chance of an instant 'pleased', from a 'cautious' civ, that no amount of bribing can get you. This is a platform for more and better tech deals, resource deals, and even hiring them for war.

In many cases I'm defining game-long allies by doing this, and if a strong neighbour asks for a modest tribute I'm often punching the air.

If always rejecting 'gimme' threats, there'll be a permenant -1 which subsequent gifts can only heal temporarily. This is fine if your plans including thumping that civ as soon as possible, but for the long term diplomacy, tribute & help trump gifts.

All the above applies to 'gimme' demands. Much harder are the 'lose-lose' demands to stop trading with a 3rd party, where you have the choice of pissing off either Civ A or Civ B. Unlike tributes and gifts, these demands never seem to stop, and you don't get any credit for accepting them - so rejecting these and flipping 'em a coin to try and make up is often more appropraite.

In most cases the 'You have traded with our worst enemy' ledger never seems to decay, but in some cases it can decay very quickly. However, the only way to stop these demands is not to trade with their worst enemy, which can be difficult at times, especially when they have many enemies, but in those instances it's probably better to kiss up to those enemies instead.

It's become an axiom of Civ 4 that you have to pick a side and stick with it, which is why studying the AI-AI relations can be important. Some love or hate each other at first sight, it seems, so by keeping an eye on these when you sign open border agreements, you know who you're going to be upsetting.

Typically now, I neither convert to my own religion nor automatically sign Open Borders with all civs. I like to test the air, see who who's thinking what about whom, and often hold back from dealing with civs whose enemy I don't want to cross.

I said at the top that this is a playstyle thing perhaps, and as I'm usually #7 in military for a long time, paying close attention to the diplomacy has become an increased priority for me.

On another diplomatic aspect, converting to a neighbours religion must be considered an opportunistic rather than a strategic option, because you can't go out and make this happen. It's very likely that I'll get a visit from their army before their missionaries.

**heliodorus04** · December 22, 2005, 15:50

What a great post, Haus!
Thanks!

Thanks to everyone else, too. I'll be loading a game up here shortly and trying to carry my inertia into the modern era...

**Velociryx** · December 22, 2005, 17:13

I agree, CH, but would approach it from a different angle. I pick my friends pretty early, and butter them up. They seldom make demands of me (since we have lots of juicy deals going already), and I don't have to worry much about them.

On the other hand, if I'm not ready to fight yet, but some joker from far away (or maybe not so far away) is being a bully, I'll duly note it, give him the token 5 or dime, and put him a notch higher on the "to be destroyed" list.

-=Vel=-

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