Evaluate my performance

[dacole]

ok playing my first game on prince and getting killed. I have attached a couple save games to this message. I would like you to evaluate my performance and tell me ways I can improve. Couple things I know I can do better.

1. I should have put more cities on the coast. Coastal cites are WAY better for commerace and with a lighthouse population. For example I should have put a city in the ice toward the south simply becuase there were two fish specials close to it.

2. I need to explore more and I think I didn't put enough cities early enough. I stopped exloreing as soon as I saw ice this was a mistake the south of my contienet was much more appropriate for cities than I thought. I only ended up with seven cities I think and this even for civ IV is two few.

3. I need to use specialists more. I have a tendancy not to put any specialists until I have an almost full city population this is a mistake. 1 or 2 specialists make a HUGE difference and are worth the loss in food or production. As well the AI ends up making many more great people and starting golden ages wayyy more often than I do by 1685 I have had only 1.

4. I need to actually write up my plans and how I'm going to play since I play in small snippets as opposed to several hours at a time.

Little information about the game started as Britin with Victoria. Did a conquerer start took out montezuma pretty early built stonehenge for early culture. Dalton no matter what I did ened up revolting to Mali, spent a LOT of time trying to prevent this I eventually let it convert than went to war with Mali despite the fact he was MUCH stronger than me. Should have done this earlier and then immeaditly made peace spent to much time trying to take cities after that. As well may not have made enough cottages not sure. Anyway take a look and tell me what you think!

Thank you to anyone who can help me! (hope to start playing multiplayer games but want to get to where I can beat the AI first otherwise would get killed I know)

http://apolyton.net/upload/link/30928_DanielAD-0540.Civ4SavedGame

http://apolyton.net/upload/link/30928_DanielAD-1080.Civ4SavedGame

http://apolyton.net/upload/link/30928_DanielAD-1420.Civ4SavedGame

http://apolyton.net/upload/link/30928_DanielAD-1530.Civ4SavedGame

[Blake]

You need more cities, at least 5 or 6 cities could've gone on that land, in particular it is bad that there are 3 fish resources unused off the east coast.

Also instead of running the slider you should whip unhappy population into Forges, Marketplaces, Libraries etc, this basically is win-win. Nearly all of your cities are lacking some vital infrastructure and the whip is the cure for that.

I would think it is dead obvious that instead of putting 20% of commerce into culture, it would be better to have cities that are smaller but with 25% higher multipliers - especially since these multiplier buildings also increase the happy cap, so the cities wont be smaller for long.

[dacole]

Yea was a little to nervous about the new cost of cites..ah well. Thanks for the help. Any other thoughts?

[dacole]

so you build forges, marketplaces and libraries banks in all your cities? I was only building marketplaces and libraries in cites that were going to be GP cities or money cities. The -1 health in forges means I only put them in cities that I will use for production mainly. The unhappiness only came becuase of the war weariness and so I was leaving it alone as I "thought" the war wouldn't last long...was wrong.

[Diadem]

Forges are useful in all cities. Every city needs production, no matter what its role. And forges allow you to run engineer specialists, which are the best specialists.

[Diadem]

Anyway to comment on your saves:

Could you post an earlier save? The earliest parts of the game are usually the most important. Your first save is in 740AD, which is quite late already. It's also in the middle of a war, which is usually not the best time to take a quiet look at an empire

I can give you some advice though, based on what I can see.

First of all you need more workers. You only have 3 in 740AD. And it looks like you only captured 2 of those 1 turn ago. 1 worker is simply not enough for an empire.

Because you do not have enough worker, you have a major wastage in production and research etc. Notthingham is working 3 unimproved forest tiles, while you have an unimproved (!) stone inside your fat cross. That's 2 full hammers wasted. It's also using a forest plains hill, instead of one of those grassland hills you could mine - that's 1 full food wasted. If you use that food to work another mined grassland hill instead of a grassland forest, you will have 4 extra hammers in that city. For free, without any disadvantage.

York is worse. Within the fat cross of York you have an unimproved Marble *and* an unimproved sheep. That's a very major wastage.

Build more workers, improve resources and other tiles. This will dramaticly improve the usefulness of your cities. They will have more production, and more food, allowing them to grow bigger and use even more tiles.

You also need to build many more cottages. You have 1 cottage in your empire, as a financial civ. That's just not enough!

Build more workers (do this much earlier in the game than 740 AD!), and improve all resources in your empire, and all other good tiles as well. Make sure cities are always working improved tiles, except perhaps the occasional forest. Add a generous amount of cottages. This will dramaticly increase the usefulness of your cities. You will be able to build more units, more buildings, you will have much more research etc.

As a result you will be able to expand more, and build more cities. 5 cities is too few in 740 AD. But using cities effectively is even more important then having lots of cities.


Another issue is exploration. You need to explore much more. Sign open border agreements with other civs and explore their territory. You want to know your entire continent by 740AD. You have large parts still unexplored.

These two are the basics. Once you have that, you can focus on building more buildings, units (and which ones, that's important) etc. And of course using specialists. You are financial / philosophical, but you aren't really using any of those traits.

[dacole]

Ok didn't move fast enough makes since. I think the resources were improved but got destroyed by the war not sure I remember...I will look for an earlier save though I don't think I kept one...

nope earliest one I have is named 540 AD must have written over it in 740AD sorry. Thanks for the help though!

[Blake]

Another issue is exploration. You need to explore much more. Sign open border agreements with other civs and explore their territory. You want to know your entire continent by 740AD. You have large parts still unexplored.

This is... debatable . Oh sure it's good practise to explore, but the fact is many players don't bother a lot of the time. I still have to prod myself to explore more. One thing I've found useful is training a scout or explorer in the mid game and setting him to autoexplore so he'll map out everyone I now have open borders with.

To add to what Diadem said on workers (as if he didn't stress them enough already! heh!) you should try at the start to have 2 workers per city, letting that fall to 1 worker per city as you found more cities. It's not a bad idea to train 2 workers from your capital before even training a settler, this does tend to result in faster development, but it's at the possible cost of losing a good city site to the AI (but you might lose it anyway).
For sure having less than 1 worker per city on a land map is very sub-optimal, if there's a lot of jungle you might want as many as 3 workers per city.

[dacole]

hmm until I end up getting in to war I usually end up having to many workers, guess I'm not terraorming enough. Could use more roads I know especially along borders. Was leaving some forests for health and eventually lumbermills but man those take awhile to get to...

[Diadem]

Originally posted by Blake

This is... debatable . Oh sure it's good practise to explore, but the fact is many players don't bother a lot of the time. I still have to prod myself to explore more. One thing I've found useful is training a scout or explorer in the mid game and setting him to autoexplore so he'll map out everyone I now have open borders with.

Well, exploration is not a necessity, but it is usually useful. And while I usually don't sign open border agreements for the sole purpose of exploration (unless it's someone I'm going to declare war on in a few turns *hehe*), I do tend to explore the lands of those I have open borders with.

And I will certainly try to explore land that's not in anyone's territory. In dacole's game there's a large piece of the island left unexplored in the south-corner, pretty much next to his empire. It's probably boring ice, but still.



But anyway. I think we would be able to give much better advice if you gave earlier saves. The early part is usually the most important. Right now in your game, you're already very far behind in techs. You don't start behind (except on immortal / deity :P) so somewhere you lost out. That is the point where you 'went wrong'. And though you might be able to salvage this game, it will not be easy.

[dacole]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=159914

Link to my next evaluate performance thread. Slowly learning I think my even try and finish this game..(never had TWO civs decleare war on me at the same time before should be interesting..)