Is there a general "I suck at CIV IV" strat/tips thread?

[fluffy_bunny]

Update

Update:

Thanks for the feedback all, especially Hauptman - your tips helped greatly.

I played a game at Noble and made some changes to my early game strategy and it helped greatly, I basically had the game locked up by the industrial age. I won via domination by around 1950 or so - don't remember exactly. I probably could have won a lot earlier but I was being very cautious. I had a huge lead in all aspects by the end of the game, basically crushing my biggest two rivals within a few turns with swarms of modern armor when all they had to defend was a mix of rifleman, infantry, and SAM infantry.

My main problem seems to definitely have been how I played the first 100ish turns. Before, I never made workers first or bothered trying to found a religion - I would always turn my capital into a setler factory (a-la Civ III) and expand way too fast.

I'm playing a new game on Prince. So far so good, although I am still having money problems (I feel like I am anyway - maybe that's normal for this phase of the game?). I fought an early war with the Americans and wiped them out with a stack of swords, axes, and catapult and capturing three nice cities in the process. I'm neck-and-neck score-wise with the other two AI's on my continent, Charlemagne and Napoleon.

I'll upload a save when I get home, maybe some of you will have some additional insight.

Thanks!

-fluff

[fluffy_bunny]

Save attached plus update

OK I've played more since my last post and attached a save.

I was feeling pretty good about this game until this turn - the Ethopians just appeared and they are more than 300 points ahead of me (1383 vs 1041), they have 5 techs that I don't have and I have nothing I can trade them.

Charlemagne is in a good defensible position with lots of longbows, trebuchet, maces, and crossbows at his disposal. We're basically in a stalemate military-wise; which is both a good and bad thing - he's a buffer between me and Napoleon, but he is the only territory I could possibly expand into right now.

The save is attached - any advice or tips would be appreciated Also, if it's a lost cause let me know so I can try again

-fluff

[Fleme]

First of all I'd like to take note of your city placement which I find to be less than perfect.

I took the liberty of taking your empire under my MS Paintbrush and putting up locations that I would have settled in your place.





That's how I would've roughly placed my cities. Here's why: First of all the spot of (1) will gain 1 more clams if you move it one tile west and since you're Dutch having a few more water tiles won't hurt. You'll lose access to a few hill tiles but in my opinion it's well worth it. It will still have fresh water.

(2) would be a good spot for a city because it has 2 deer and quite a few river tiles including a flood plain. It would make a good city to set up your economy by building cottages on every single Grass + Flood plains tile. If you don't improve the tundra tiles it could later on serve as your National Park town as well with up to 7 Tundra forest tiles (if you're very lucky and forest grows there) and atleast 4, which is plenty. Has fresh water, which is always a plus.

(3) would be another good spot for a cottage city or a production city since it has good flood plains tiles for cottage improvement as well as a few Grassland tiles well suited for cottages. On the other hand it does have 4 hill tiles as well which could be worked if you farmed the river tiles - but I personally always prefer cottages on flood plains and river grasslands. Fresh Water

(4). You did a good choice of location here but I'd move it one tile south because I don't like having cities with water tiles when they can't actually work them. Not a huge deal though; You'd still get +1 from the coast tile eventually and by having your city where it is it gains access to that hill on the northern side. Anyways, a monster spot for a production city with 3 Ivory, Horse and a Corn. I would probably make (3) a cottage city and have (4) serve as the main production city. Fresh Water

(5) Not a very good spot by any means. You already have the resources it provides but I would personally settle here since I like integrity. It'll be good for production - eventually. (Eventually meaning when you get CS and can spread farms to the Grassland tiles and build a mix of farms and workshops on the plains tiles) No fresh water,

(6) should actually be settled in place of (4) if you faced imminent danger from your enemies or wanted to Axe them. Naturally the iron in (3) makes up for this when you get IW but yea, it's always nice to have a Copper resource. By moving it west one square you'd have atleast 1 proper cottage spot and could just improve the rest of the plains/grass into farms.

(7) is essentially a border garrison. I like to build these on hills for the defense bonus and as an added extra you'd gain Stone, Sheep and a second source of Iron in the BFC. No fresh water, no real prospects for this city.

(8) Since I usually raze Barbarian cities for being placed so damn badly I would have done so here as well. By having it a bit further north it'd have a lot more workable land while still retaining 1 of the deer in the BFC and gaining Copper. No fresh water in either case, which makes me

(9) Since you don't have fish, this spot should have a little fishing village on it. It would also have Deer and Iron in it's BFC. I'd probably use this city for farming up a few Great People and since you're Dutch it wouldn't be half bad for production either, come Steam Power.

(10) Another fishing village. You don't have Crabs nor Silver so it would be good for both those reasons. No great prospects for this town other than providing the empire with resources.

(X) Has no real importance but I'd settle it for integrity. The spot isn't set in stone either so you can move it around as you please.

Now to the issues. You have way, way, way too few workers. I usually have an army plowing through my countryside to make the best of it as fast as possible. Tap your resources and get your cottages going by the classical era at the latest. The year is 1500+ AD and it has been improved like it's 1 AD, at best. More workers, a lot more. When you move to a cottage economy you'll notice that you can run your science at higher levels and I'd assume that you could be up to 70% if your empire was improved in the "right" way (not necessarily right, but the way I go about my business).

War with Charlemagne would make you poor since he has a huge garrison along with his Landsknechts. I don't know the battle would go but either way you'd end up losing wads of cash. Anyways, in order for you to be able to wage war and match Zara you'd need for your empire to be improved really fast. The Dutch, like other nations with Financial leaders, benefit from a cottage-heavy economy and their coastal cities will become nasty with the Dikes so if you can just improve your land quickly and set your goals, this game could be won. Once you've reached a good economy you should start keeping an eye on the political situation on the other continent (by this time you'll probably have contact with them and have access to their maps, since yours is pretty much a stalemate unless you're willing to launch an assault on Charlemagne and his friend Napoleon. (They share a religion and are likely to tagteam if you declare war on one. So, keep an eye on the other continent and if you are able to tech sufficiently, launch an attack to some poorly guarded coastal cities over there to gain a beachead. If you find out that they don't share a religion it could be that you could take advantage of their internal wars.

Anyways, that's how I'd do. You probably can't win by peaceful means since no-one shares your religion and Zara seems to be in a techlead so I'd go warmongering at the opportune moment.

But if you don't take anything else from my post take atleast this: Improve your land and start running a cottage economy. You won't regret it. Oh, and don't forget to build Libraries, Markets and other financial improvements in your Cottage towns.

Edit: If you get a good start you should try to get the following wonders; Pyramids (Representation works really well, even better when you get Caste System), Temple or Artemis (Money, ) and if you have a strong coastal production city, The Lighthouse and the Colossus. Great Merchants are a great boost to stick in your cottage cities for the extra food and gold. A coastal floodplains city with a few hill tiles is the best you can have. You get production which you can use early and build the wonders and soon after you'll be popping prophets/merchants for more gold. Try it too, sometime

Editing even further: I started a game with the goal of showing you proper city placement and early economy. It was a Standard RandomScriptMap with 12 AI's, I think. Monarch. The difficulty doesn't matter though. For leader I randomed Louis XIV and the French. Not bad for a builder.

Anyways, here goes:



Monster start location. This map script creates crazy maps sometimes but yea, it's the same for everyone and since the AI gets going really fast on hard difficulties it really offsets the gain I get. (For example, it turns out that Hannibal on the other continent had 8 Flood plains, 4 River Grasslands, Cattle, Iron and Rice along with 2 riverside hills in his BFC) So, I popped my settler 1 square east of where Paris is but since I wanted to have a coastal city I moved it to the West. Good choice, since soon a horse appeared in the BFC. Good capital spot with lots of food and potential for a budding cottage economy, along with decent production. Sent my first warrior to scout north and it reached up to the spot where Orleans is, popped a hostile hut and died. Decided that my second city should be there. At this time I researched pottery, mining, masonry, followed by mysticism, polytheism and monotheism (Got a religion out of monotheism, chose Taoism). First build order was a warrior and then started on another one. When I reached size 3 I built a worker and a settler right after. Settler went unguarded.



Here you see how crazy the spot of Orleans really is. 3 Food sources, Grassland River, Hills, Horse, Stone - So yes, while I usually don't go that far with my second city I just coulnd't pass up on that. I soon built a second worker in Paris and started building a route to Orleans, followed by a new settler. Settler went to found Lyons (whose cottages I may have to change into farms since I didn't quite realize how poor it was for food). Taoism founded a few turns after. After this point my Research went towards Writing, Alphabet and eventually Currency. These are always my first order of business after Monotheism and Bronze Working.



Here's the southern part. Rheims is the 4th city and was founded because of the Marble. After the settler had went Paris started building ToA and with the help of being Industrious and having access to Marble the temple didn't take too long to finish. Economy was now good, early cottages up and the temple boosting my little trade income. Meanwhile Orleans was building the Pyramids and did manage to finish them too. Built a lighthouse and started on GL but failed. I After Currency I researched Metal Casting but didn't even get to start on Colossus before it was built. Well, 2/4 early wonders I wanted, could be worse.

As for cities, I soon expanded to Tours and started building galleys in Orleans. Founded Marseilles on the small island with 2 clams and improved the other small island in the BFC with a workshop. Captured Polynesian which was actually on a good spot so I didn't raze it like the other barb city down south, founded Avignon on the larger island to the north and will found another city there soon. There's also another island sized 6 squares that has Marble and Copper which I will settle. There's also a spot that I will settle northwest of Paris but it's not a priority. I'll probably settle the islands and the tundra spot down south before settling here.

As for my neighbors, I got a bunch of wussies. Once I'm done expanding I'll probably burn a few of Pacal's cities and settle to the places I find good and then make him my Vassal. The other continent(s) seem to be technologically on my level or a bit ahead but I'm not worried since I'm off to a great start.

Another edit:

So I played it to 1500 AD to see how my empire would look at that point. By this time I had conquered the Maya and the Babylonians who were both now living on the nearby islands as my Vassals, providing me with seafood (I hope to get Sid's Sushi). Zara Yaqob offered himself as a Vassal after Hammurabi and Pacal II were conquered so now I had three vassals. The other continent is ruled by a Christian block led by Peter who is quite peaceful. Can't say the same about the other guys though. Before Pacal capitulated he managed to get Suryavarman, Hannibal and Mansa to declare war on me and it was damn close that I didn't lose Orleans to Hannibal's naval sneak attack. After Pacal capitulated, the three ceased hostilities and I could proceed to ravage Babylonia.

Anyways, to show you how my cities are improved I took screenshots from roughly the same spots as I did in the 1 AD shots. Also the technology level is showing in the screens.








Running on 70%, I have +87 Per turn, just founded Mining Inc. No wonders after the Temple of Artemis and Pyramids since the Christian block was ahead of me in techs until like 1400 AD.

Anyways, the overall point that I was trying to make is that you really should improve your land

[Unimatrix11]

Fleme - i didnt look at the save, but somehow i fear, you may be spoiling the game for him. If he didnt use the world-builder, he didnt see the oil... or the state of improvements on the other continent, maybe... Of course, then he didnt take them into account when he was planing...

[Fleme]

Good point Unimatrix. I've edited my post and took screenshots from the map instead the worldbuilder - now it's you who is spoiling

[fluffy_bunny]

Thank Fleme, the point on needing to improve more and faster is well taken - but I have some tile improvement related questions:

1) About how many workers should I have - what's the right balance? This is a Civ IV concept that has always given me trouble, I always feel like I have too many but you say I don't have nearly enough? I have cities that range from size 5 to 11ish, many of them have improved tiles that aren't even being worked because of city size. So why then would I spend empire resources to que up more workers when I already have improved tiles all over the place that aren't being worked?

2) When should I and shouldn't I knock down forest in favor of cottages or something else? I always try to leave a lot of forest so that I can build lumber mills + railroads later, is this a bad idea?

3) Workshops. Do you ever build these?

4) Is there a specific gold/food/hammer ratio you try to shoot for on your good cities?

Other general questions that your post brought up for me:

- Specialists. I hardly ever futz with them. I know I should be though, how/when is a good time to turn on specialists and how many is too many? Again, another balance issue here that makes me go

- Micromanaging cities and workers, how much does it take? I usually let the cities pick the tiles they work automatically unless I can think of a really good reason not to. I never turn workers on automate since in my experience they build stupid improvements, but maybe this was just me not understanding what the right improvements were?

- Early war. In my game I chose to take out the American early using mostly axes, spears, and catapults (no iron when I started). Would I have been better off just building up in my territory and going after them later? Part of my decision to attack early was because I got the "secure this iron" mission which gave me 6 free swords when I took Boston - now I'm wondering if maybe it wasn't worth it.

[Fleme]

1) I generally have 1 or 2 per city when my empire is small-ish and rarely over 20 in any case. Of course small cities don't need a lot of improvements but then again if they are to grow they need to have the improvements ready. And it's always good to have a variety available to you since you never know - might be a war coming and you'll need for that commerce city to start pushing hammers instead and of cource vice versa.

2) I chop forests when it's most convenient; Usually when building wonders. I chop for Pyramids, Temple or Artemis and other wonders and I never leave riverside tiles laying around with forests on them. Workshops are better for production than lumbermills anyways and I don't see the health benefit from forests to be that great when compared to raw production. Also this way you get your hammers a lot earlier.

3) All the time. I used to avoid them but then I realized that they're just as good as mines. When there's a city with a few plains tiles and a few grassland tiles with no commercial options, I improve the grasslands into farms and if there's enough food, then I'll make the plains tiles into workshops.

4) Depends entirely on the city. Some cities are by default intended to be commercial giants while being lousy at production. Specializing your cities is often the way to go since that way you can get most benefits from certain national wonders such as the Wall Street or the Oxford University.

Otherwise poor spots such as (9) are good for specialist-only cities. If you run caste system you can let the town grow as much as the 3 food sources (2 fish and deer) can provide and after that assign every citizen as a merchant or a scientist. They will churn out better profits than they would by working the poor tundra tiles or the coastal waters - all the while generating points towards a great scientist or a merchant which you can in turn use to further improve your great commercial cities. Again, you specialize a marginal city to serve your greater cities by doing this and you shouldn't feel too bad about having a backwards town or two, since they will be serving an important, albeit most of the time invisible, role.

Worker automation is something I'd never recommend. I do turn on automated trade networking once I research railroads but that's about it. General rules of the thumb for me are tapping resources first, followed by improving all my grassland riverside tiles and floodplains into cottages followed by mining most of my hills. (I'm an optimist, I wait for resources to pop ) Now, of course there are times when you have to farm a flood plains tile or a grassland river tile but generally you can find your food from other tiles as well. Since your city is ideally by the river it will have irrigation going through it so I find it to be a waste to use a riverside grassland (or plains even, if there's food to be had from other tiles) for farming. Riverside plains I usually farm since I do need to get that food from somewhere and then continue that farm to the non-irrigated tiles when I get Civil Service. Now, if the city is not by a river I usually improve the grasslands into farms, hills into mines and plains into workshops. You can see this pattern in the images I attached from my testgame. The 4th city Rheims is an example of a workshop city while two of the first cities are cottage cities and Lyons a production city by the river (because there wasn't enough food to make it a commercial city).

Wars are almost always good. The American terrain is generally better than yours and they also had resources that you lacked so the war was by all means a good choice. They're also improved better than your cities although I hate the placement of them (I just hate the way AI places, I've become quite a razer recently). No need to regret wars, especially wars that are that close to home.

Just work on your city placement and getting your cottage economy up faster and you'll be outteching the AI's before you know it, even without trading too many techs with them. In your future games, try to find a food-rich site for a town and give Great Person economy a try as well. Remember though, you'll need to be running Caste System or have a Library/Market or other improvements in order to be able to get any kinds of real benefits. A classic combo would be getting early Pyramids, making haste to CoL and then running Representation/Caste System. It's quite the powerhouse.

[Hauptman]

Re: Save attached plus update

Originally posted by fluffy_bunny
OK I've played more since my last post and attached a save.

I was feeling pretty good about this game until this turn - the Ethopians just appeared and they are more than 300 points ahead of me (1383 vs 1041), they have 5 techs that I don't have and I have nothing I can trade them.

Charlemagne is in a good defensible position with lots of longbows, trebuchet, maces, and crossbows at his disposal. We're basically in a stalemate military-wise; which is both a good and bad thing - he's a buffer between me and Napoleon, but he is the only territory I could possibly expand into right now.

The save is attached - any advice or tips would be appreciated Also, if it's a lost cause let me know so I can try again

-fluff

Bah dont be skeered!

300 points dont mean a whole lick o nuttin. Now personally I would have had that whole continent vassalized or conquered by now, But that because I'm a warmonger. One easy way to catch up in techs is focus in one direction and then trade for the others. If you go straight to liberalism EVERYONE else is going to have many more techs than you. BUT you have more important techs. Guilds, engineering and the others are nice, but only neccesary during war. after you get the free astronomy pop you can trade off education, philosophy and liberalism for everything you are lacking.

Then you go for railroad and although i dont recomend trading away any of those as you will be able to self tech afterwards, it is always an option.

[LzPrst]

The easiest way of building a balanced empire is to not...

In other words, build your cities so that one city does only food and hammers, build troops here. another city would have cottages only. one city for specialists only (max it out on food). and so on. not all cities can be placed in a way that makes them really good at anything in particular, they should be flexible, having mines, cottages and farms and depending on need and plan, focusing on different aspects.

[Hauptman]

Originally posted by LzPrst
The easiest way of building a balanced empire is to not...

In other words, build your cities so that one city does only food and hammers, build troops here. another city would have cottages only. one city for specialists only (max it out on food). and so on. not all cities can be placed in a way that makes them really good at anything in particular, they should be flexible, having mines, cottages and farms and depending on need and plan, focusing on different aspects.

Cottage only? ihhhk how's it going to build its libraries, markets etc...