Trying Civ4 again

[Hydro]

I abandoned Civ4 a year and a half ago as it was unstable and generally infuriating to play. Since then I upped my RAM and downloaded the patches and – low and behold – it seems to work now! The game does not slow to a crawl by the late middle ages, or just…stop…in the modern era. Whatever the cause, the instability or memory leaks seem to be gone. The video is still choppy, but that is likely due to my middle of the road graphics card.

So now I’m exploring again and I’m wondering if there is a general guide that will help sort out the options. I’m not looking for this-is-what-this-improvement-does or tech does. I can get that from the Civapedia. I’m looking more for strategic and tactical help. Also, advice on early expansion would be good. The one strategy I do recall is the forest chop (bronze tech), which really gooses early building. Also, any suggestions for good starting positions? I generally like to have at least one food special and a river for extra growth and commerce. I’m also having trouble with $$ and try to b-line for financial techs, SE, and open boarders for trade.

Secondly, any advice on how to use the various leaders for a builder’s game? I vaguely recall that expansionist and industrious are good for this. I’ve experimented with empire builders Mao and Roosevelt, and of the two like Roosevelt the best (for what that’s worth). If Roosevelt’s Americans gets a hold of early stone or marble then he’s likely to grab a good number of early Wonders!

What I’m REALLY looking forward to is trying the SMAC Civ4 mod. To be honest, that was in the back of my mind when I started Civ4 again. After I get the basics of Civ4 down then I’ll dive into that!

Hydro

[Nohbody8]

I'm by no means an expert but:

1) keep in mind that chopping forests has been modified since you last played. I don't know the exact figures but I know you don't get the full pre-patch amount until you have Mathematics.

2) if you want to emphasize commerce along rivers, don't settle for grassland or plains squares as floodplains squares are more profitable.

3) from what you've stated in your post, I think Qin Shi Huang, the other Chinese choice, would suit you better. He's industrious and financial which will really help your cottaged floodplains squares blossom.

[Velociryx]

Hiyas, Master Hydro!

Was awakened at 2am to handle a work crisis, and while I'm sitting here, waiting for the wheels and gears to spin up and get themselves moving, I thought I'd drop by the forums and...here you are!

The info in this thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=151801

is somewhat dated, but still conceptually sound IMO, tho your mileage may vary.

As with most games of this stripe, it seems that *in general*, the lower your level of difficulty, the easier time you'll have playing the builder's game, though as soon as I say that, people will, no doubt, step forward to say that they've had success at that at every level of play.

I'll just say that, at the higher levels, you begin the game increasingly disadvantaged, compared to the AI, and the simplest method of undoing those advantages is to smack someone around via aggressive behavior, so....

At any rate, for a good builder's game, once you've mastered the basics, I'd recommend prince/noble for starters, and IMO, Monarch is the most "natural" feeling level to play at.

If you're wanting to build lossa wonders, my brain gravitates toward the Inca.

Financial gives you extra coin, which can easily be translated into extra research, especially in the early game, helping you rip through the early tech tree, and Industrious gives you cheap forges (with MetalCasting), and a boost to wonders...a potent mix, especially once you nail the game's fundamentals, and can gain an early, commanding lead.

As far as getting that early game drop on the competition, the odds on favorite methodology is still some variant of "build the oracle, snag an expensive free tech" also called the Oracle Slingshot (historical note: initially referred to as the CS (Civil Service) Slingshot, the typical methodology was to get all the pre-reqs for Civil Service, build the Oracle, TAKE Civil Service, switch to Bureaucracy in the hyper early game, and use that to keep a commanding lead on your rivals....

This was seen as game breakingly powerful, and Civil Service was given more pre-requisites to make it more difficult to pull off, so these days, the typical use for the Oracle gambit is to grab any of the following techs:

Monarchy (for happiness effect/keeping the people in line)

Metal Casting (for forges)

Code of Laws (for courthouses & and a religion, if you didn't get one earlier)

Philosophy (for early game Pacifism, and a religion if you didn't get one earlier)

All good choices, depending on your game plan.

Ahhh....and my timing is perfect.

The phone beckons, so I must be off, but I hope this helps!



-=Vel=-

[Hydro]

Master Vel - your guide at the link you provided is EXACTLY what I was looking for! I missed it somehow while I was digging through old posts. As always, it provides a bit of thought and rationale (largely missing from other player guides I’ve seen) – an explanation of how the various options apply and why. This is good stuff for a beginner and chewing gum for the cerebral cortex for more advanced folks.

A quick inspection has already yielded fruit: building a worker first. This is not unlike the build-the-former-first in SMAC now that I think about it – pure Turn Advantage. I had always built a warrior out of habit.

Also, I never really noticed that the starting tile had differing resource yields, and did I not realize the defensive differences for a hill-built city (maybe because my capital has never been attacked – lucky me!). I’m sure I’ll find more of these little gems as I dig in!

As for Oracle, I had noticed discussion of the Slingshot. When I get the tech I’ve typically gone for the most expensive, but now I see I can be a bit more sneaky and strategic. I’ll have to give this much more thought. Commerce generally drags down my expansion, lowering my research rate to 70% or 80%. I know this is bad but was at a loss on how to do anything about it except for building villages and open boarders. Early Bureaucracy might just do the trick. Ah, options!

I also just bought BtS so now there are MORE traits and leaders to consider. I’ll have to play around a bit before I settle, as I inevitably do. As I like to role play the personality of the leader matters a bit and that may be why I like Roosevelt. I’ll give Inca a go, though – nothing like blood soaked stairs on my temples to stir the blood!

Nohbody8 – I did notice that the Chop has been changed, first by limiting the hammers by distance and secondly by reducing output until Mathematics. It still is incredibly useful, making Jungles a prime target for my second wave of colonies.

I haven’t tried Financial since it seems more limited, but that is likely because I don’t understand how it will be best applied. Getting two commerce per tile to trigger the bonus +1 commerce (right?) seems difficult in the early game, so this trait will be useful later when cottages have grown to towns – right? Industrial-Financial may cure my ills, so I’ll give Qin Shi a go.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say don’t settle for grassland or plains. Could you illuminate this for me?

Thanks!
Hydro

[Unimatrix11]

1st) Having to lower your science-rate to 70 or 80% is not bad at all - in fact, i think (and there are lot of a lot more skilled players out there than me, but i think they would agree by and large) that you should expand as long as you dont go broke before you hit code of laws. So having to lower it even to 0%, running all your science with specialists can be totally okay as well.

2nd) The blood-soaked stairs were the aztecs, not the incans.

3rd) A tile next to a river gives 1 commerce without improvement - add a cottage that makes 2, be financial you have 3 - without any waiting-period. A lot of specials, gold and the likes (and i think coastal sea-tiles as well) yield 2 or more commerce as well - so you take advantage from them when you are financial as well.

4th) Standard Grassland and plains are not great tiles - when founding cities, special-ressources do matter most. Tho it is a good advice to rather have cities overlap a bit than to forgoe any tiles by founding them further apart from each other, its not a big deal to miss a tile or two of plains and grassland without any specials. In fact founding a city (too early) for just those might hurt your economy, as the city will raise mantainance cost throughout your empire.

[Nohbody8]

Originally posted by Hydro
Nohbody8 – I’m not sure what you mean when you say don’t settle for grassland or plains. Could you illuminate this for me?

What I meant was that I tend to regenerate the map if I don't like my starting position. Since I pretty much always play as Qin Shi Huang these days, I don't settle on a starting position until I have a river bordered with lots of floodplains within the BFC of my first city.

[snoopy369]

Standard grassland and plains can be very useful. Special resources shine when a city is first built, as they are a 100% bonus directly; however in the long run, grass/plains improved will be nearly as useful, and a city of 20 grasslands will, eventually, be a very powerful city commerce-wise, more powerful than your average city with specials; and beyond that it will be much more flexible even at size 8-10, because you can make a grassland into:
* A 1-3-0 tile (with techs and a workshop, 2-3-0 in SProp)
* A 2-0-5 tile (with a cottage->town, and 2-1-5 with USuff)
* A 4-0-0 tile (with biology and a farm)

Having all of these options is very handy, and means you can make a pretty useful city that can be quickly repurposed. You can build it up with 3-4 farmed tiles, for example, to size fairly quickly (even at 3-0-0); you can switch the commerce tiles to hammer tiles if you need that quick library/marketplace/etc.; and you can spam cottages on half the tiles and grow up a very powerful cottage city, while maintaining the ability to build units/buildings when needed.

Sure, it doesn't specialize nearly as well as many other cities; and sure, you could make a city that is more diverse also (5 plains hills, 15 floodplains, for example); but you often won't find that city all that frequently, while you usually can find a spot for a few grassland-only cities in your game - and turn them into huge profit making machines.

[snoopy369]

Also, notice that this is somewhat inaccurate:
[q="hydro"]Nobody8 – I did notice that the Chop has been changed, first by limiting the hammers by distance and secondly by reducing output until Mathematics. It still is incredibly useful, making Jungles a prime target for my second wave of colonies. [/q]

Chopping jungles yields no benefit (other than a grassland tile and increased health). You get hammers only from forests...

[Hydro]

No hammers from jungle? **hmph** I really should pay better attention. Of course, there are frequently gems in the jungle so it isn’t all bad!

Looks like I need to do a little game deconstruction with Mister Spreadsheet. To this point I’ve been plopping down farms and cottages in equal measure around my cities on plains, grasslands, and floodplains, leaving about half the forests intact (unless I’m in a Sherwood Forest area), mines and later windmills on hills, and very rarely workshops. I love lumbermills since they make all those forests I’ve conserved for so long very productive.

But, there was no thought on how the city was using the tiles, and I just let the AI allocate them as it pleased. My cities were never really specialized, at least not on purpose. Moreover, I’ve never assigned specialists so I’ll definitely have to look into it for my high food production cities (with the proper techs and improvements, of course).

I just finished scanning Vel’s 2006 Magnum Opus guide (there have been some changes in the last 1.5 years, obviously). Lots of juicy ideas there! I never have done a pop rush under slavery (never really saw how to do it on the city screen). It also never quite dawned on me how to use Financial, but I think I get it now.

So, time to start a new game – with my tool box filled with shiny new tools!

Hydro

[Velociryx]

Hiyas Hydro! I'm glad the guide (even in its current incomplete state) was of help, and my hope is that someday, I'll be able to come back and add more to it.

For the moment tho, I'm just glad to see that it's still helping folks...

-=Vel=-

[Kataphraktoi]

Dont be afraid of lower science rates-i will take it to 30%+ without a moments hesitation. You can vastly increase production and with good city sites maintain similar research rates. Later when you spam courthouses the research rate really takes off. One of my favs in BTS is running HRE with William of Orange(fin\cre) and using the rathaus to help power a huge cottage economy.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Hydro
I never have done a pop rush under slavery (never really saw how to do it on the city screen).

You need to be careful how you use that. Everytime you pop rush you create unhappiness in your city for 30 turns. So if you don't do it right you could make things worse for yourself.

[Nohbody8]

What are some ways of doing it right?

[snoopy369]

It's 10 turns on normal/20 on epic/30 on marathon. Basically, poprush only for multiple pop (not only 1 pop) and do it only once every (10/20/30) turns. You should allow your cities to grow 1-2 unhappy people, and then poprush something that is useful with those unhappy people + 1 or 2 (max) more.

This cycle is very important in the early game.

[Nohbody8]

I've tried this before to very little effect. I was not very good at managing the unhappiness. Essentially, what you are saying is that you should just keep pop rushing/whipping the unhappy people in your city away?