Noob Questions about General Gameplay

[Landsurveyor]

CIV4 is my first computer turn based game. I've been reading the manual and practicing on the easiest level. However, lastnight I started a medium difficulty game and I'm starting to notice that for the most part I have been utilizing the entire Tech Tree. So I ask myself, if you eventually wind up with the entire tech tree, where is the strategy? In unit selection? City location? And if this is the case, then why wouldn't you just start a game with all techs already in place? Do opponents really advance at different rates through the tech tree? If so, I don't see how.

[snoopy369]

It's in how quickly you acquire which part of the tech tree. It's about staying alive long enough to acquire the entire tech tree (usually not needed to win, but whatever works for you), and in getting those techs faster than anyone else, where possible.

Basically everything is a strategic decision - where to build, how quickly to build, when to build units vs. buildings vs workers vs settlers, which cities to improve first, how many workers to build, which techs to research first, which civs to attack ...

And yes, everyone progresses through the tech tree at a different rate. You make many choices in the game that affect this... tech rate, how many cities you build, whether they focus on commerce(tech) or hammers(building stuff) or food(building more citizens) ...

[pedrojedi]

This perception of yours can become enhanced with "fast" game speeds - fast for my standards, I must say.

Anyway, try playing with longer time frames - that last selection before starting, where you can choose between quick, normal, epic or marathon - and you'll see some very different playin'.

[Blaupanzer]

Landsurveyor, welcome aboard.

Yes you can do any one part of the game relatively quickly as long as no challenges arise. However, the game is about searching, building settlers, locating cities, building up your economy to sustain more cities and building a military sufficient to defend your empire and conquer others. All this while also developing your science, noting that these funds compete with economy sustainment, and the city must build only one building at a time when so many are available.

Go to Noble level, so you and the AI are roughly equal, and turn on aggressive AI in the custom game menu. This will give you a game where your survival is not guarenteed, and most likely you won't run right thru the whole tech tree rapidly. Be careful about early expansion as too many cities can effectively bankrupt you.

If this gets comfortable, try pedrojedi's suggestion to play on Epic. Then try Marathon speed. Yes, the game takes longer but the action is much more oriented to the military and you have more recovery time if an initiative didn't quite work. I find Epic to be the right speed for me.suggestions.

[Landsurveyor]

Thanks all for the great tips/suggestions. I'll check back in in a few weeks or so.

I was alittle perplexed that so many things were automated, and zipping through the tech tree made it seem like I wasn't, in fact, playing a game? I don't know. But after micromanaging road and resources I came to find that there is a time for automation (I read on another blog that toward an end of a game, for example, you pretty much have to automate anyway). So clearly I'm very green. But I really enjoy it. I enjoy the interface and the game is obviously super deep. I'll be in touch.

[joncnunn]

Unless your playing a game with turn timers (usally only found in MP games), you don't have to automate anything if you don't want to.

That's the nature of a turn based game : You can take as much time as you want before things advance.

Most of my MM is overiding the governors decisions to use spy specalists. Occansionaly I find worse problems than that with their worker placement and fix those. I always manage workers myself.

[Landsurveyor]

Okay, but if you were to automate workers, can you explain to me some certain things? On Improvements, what are the differences between

1. Build Improvements
2. Build Trade Network
3. Improve Nearest City

Because they seem to do the same things. And the manual isn't very clear about it.

And then there is this situation of roads after a resource has had an inprovement built on it. What is the difference between

1. Route to mode to connect the resource, or
2. Building a road.

I know that the tile suggests building a road, but what's the difference?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Landsurveyor
On Improvements, what are the differences between

1. Build Improvements

This is the basic automation. The Worker will go all over your empire doing whatever it feels should be done at the time.

2. Build Trade Network

This is actually the only one you should be using. All it does is go around and hook up your resources. If there aren't any that can be connected to your empire at that time, then it will just go around and build roads everywhere. When Railroads come along, it will proceed to add them everywhere there's a road.

3. Improve Nearest City

This is basically the same as #1 but it will focus only on the nearest city. Once everything is done it will either sit in the city and wait or move on to the next nearest city that needs work done. I'd probably use this one more if it only went into the city and waited.

What is the difference between

1. Route to mode to connect the resource, or
2. Building a road.

"Route to" will build a road in every tile until it reaches the designated destination. Simply building a road will only do so in the tile that the Worker happens to be on at the moment.

[ColdPhoenix]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Most of my MM is overiding the governors decisions to use spy specalists.

Tell me about it...

[Supr49er]

You will eventually want to control your workers, cities, and citizens yourself for maximum effect. This is known as "micromanaging", but will give you the most control of your civ.

Welcome to Apolyton Landsurveyor.

[Landsurveyor]

Thanks for the warm welcomes. Answer me this, in the WorldBuilder is there is no way to control commerce, or hammers, or food?

[Ming]

What do you mean by "control"?

Because you can change many things in World Builder.
If you need more food for a city, you can always change the land around it, add a special or two, change improvements... The same can be done for hammers and commerce, but it's done by changing the land.

You can really cheat by giving yourself many Great People, and then joining them into the city to give you more money, hammers, science, whatever... or use them to create continuing golden ages...

It really depends on how much you want to cheat

[Landsurveyor]

Originally posted by Ming
What do you mean by "control"?

Because you can change many things in World Builder.
If you need more food for a city, you can always change the land around it, add a special or two, change improvements... The same can be done for hammers and commerce, but it's done by changing the land.

You can really cheat by giving yourself many Great People, and then joining them into the city to give you more money, hammers, science, whatever... or use them to create continuing golden ages...

It really depends on how much you want to cheat

Actually I'm just trying to understand the relationships between hammers, gold, and bread. And to a degree, real population. I was trying to create a city that had nothing, but I quickly found that I cannot do that and that by default it creates 1 gold coin (9 commerce), 1 hammer (2 production) and 2 breads (2 food).

So why is there no way to monitor real population? Or is there? Because the game informs you when you hit certain numbers (1/2 million and so on).

[Unimatrix11]

Okay... where to start.

First, and i dont mean no offence, but just want to help: RTFM.

So: A city always utilizes the tile, on which itself is located. This is always (i think) 2 food (the ´official´ term for what you call ´bread´) and at least one hammer and i think 1 commerce. Now for each population point (including the first one !), it utilitzes another tile (disregarding unhappyness and specialists for now), which yields more food/hammers/commerce. Since a city always at least has one population point, it can not not produce anything. The capital city of each civ (which is the first city built by default) has a palace, which produces another 8 commerce (or beakers ?). Thus the stats you mentioned: 1 gold coin you probably counted on your tiles (which is commerce, not gold) and antoher 8 came from the palace making it 9 commerce total. A hammer is always one production, unless you have built forges, factories or the likes in the city. From the stats i can tell, that you put the popultion point to work as a citizen, which produces one hammer. The other one is on your centre tile making it two. The two food come from your centre tile as well.

When you look at the top of the city screen, you see the food bar. The solid colored part is the acculated food, and the rather transparent part is your surplus per turn. When the solid part reaches the end of the line, you get another population point, the bar is reset and the limit for the next pop increased. So in order to grow your cities, you need to produce a lot of food.

The population count in the city screen (and it might work differently for the demographics screen, i dunno), works like this: Population displayed = (population points)!*10,000 ; the faculty of the pops times 10,000. So 1 pop is 10,000, and 3 is 3*2*1*10,000 = 60,000. It´s a rather cosmetic number in civ - the actual pops is what counts gamewise.

[Landsurveyor]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11


First, and i dont mean no offence, but just want to help: RTFM.

Thanks? The part about the Palace=8 commerce is not in the manual, but I should have been able to deduce I guess easily enough. The population point conversion stuff is certainly not in the manual. I have the Gold Edition and the abridged manual is okay I guess. And the full manual, which is supposed to be on disk, is in fact nt on the disk. The population stuff is not in the full manual, either.

I am, however, starting to get away from the detail and into the larger game.