Questions from a rookie

[ybrevo]

I have played less than 10 games of CIV 4 so far (only playing marathon and it takes a looong time for me to finish them), and new questions - some of them probably with very simple answers - keeps popping up in my curious mind I hope some of you can help me with these three:

1. What are the pro and cons with open borders - early and late game? And who do you want to open your borders for, a neighbor or someone on a distant continent?

2. What are the benefits of org. religion compared to free religion - and vice versa? Doesn´t organized generate more cash, if you have a lot of cities under that religion?

3. My present capital has no less than 6 angry faces telling me, "it is too crowded". I told them to go away and live in a deserted hut, but they refuse to do it. What can I do, when there are no more buildings left generating happy faces, and no resources left to trade with the same purpose?

Thanks in advance

ybrevo

[Garth Vader]

1. Pros are trade, exploration, spread of religion. I like them early on to map my continent, once you know who is there and what religions have been founded you can decide who you are going to be friends with and who you are likely to fight.

Other continents are always good cause they are usually high value trade routes.

2. OR gives you +25% to production, I generally stay in that all game.

3. For each size above a certain size a city will get one unhappy face. That size depends on difficulty. If you have no more happy buildings or resources you can either raise your cultural slider, slave away excess population and change your tiles so it doesn't grow back as big or station units in that city (if you are in Hereditary rule).

[rah]

1. agreed The farther away, more likely. It doesn't help passive spread of religion so remember to keep on those missionaries.

2. Remember that 25% production bonus is only in cities that have your state religion and only when building buildings.
Later I'll switch to free religion since I prefer the research and I'll get to the point that most of my builds are units, not building.

3. Pretty much what he said. But I'll more aggressively manage that.

[Blaupanzer]

On 3, if your capitol has 6 unhappy faces and 13 happy faces, you are fine. It IS too crowded, but the long-term solution for that is in the future, so just give them alternatives.

If your capitol is 6 in the red after considering the happies, then it got too big, too fast. For your capitol this takes some time. For next round or game, keep an eye on all your cities. None should pass their happy limit except from external influences. Use slavery to keep them trim early in the game and specialists later.

Choices now to reduce pop are to draft units (at 1 unit per turn which reduces the city by taking 2 citizens a turn for about 4 turns) in the Nationalism Civic, or go to the Slavery Civic and pick a building project that takes 7+ citizens at once, then agree to the cost which will cause a LOT less temporary unhappiness than the drafting. Of course, trading for 6 happiness resources from the other leaders for things you have that they want would fix this too. In the civilopedia is a section under game concepts called happiness. This will tell you in a generic sense what keeps them glad, what makes them sad.

[Blaupanzer]

Rah, Don't you have buildings going up in the newly captured cities all game? I too like the science, but losing OR's building bonus for cities desperately replacing the buildings critical to its future (No culture buildings when you go in.) makes this a hard choice.

[Garth Vader]

That's why I stay in OR. Late game tech happens faster than I can build new buildings anyway, this way I have a chance of keeping up.

[Ming]

I guess it's more a matter of what kind of civ player you are... if you are builder, OR is your choice. I don't feel the need of having to Keep up with the new buildings in every city. Many of the captured cites I keep build a theater, barracks, forge and then units. If it's a particularly good city, I may decide that it won't be building units for the rest of the game The 10% across all my cities is usually worth more than building buildings in the outlying area. I want to be able to have the best and biggest military out there. Most of my victories are via conquest or domination, and I rarely get into the late game where many of the buildings are even needed.

[rah]

If I'm in conquest streak, I'll be whipping those building to get the buildings and handling the original unhappiness issues so the OR bonus isn't as important. If it's pre-commie, theater, barracks, courthouse, more units to feed the war engine.

[ybrevo]

Thanks for your helpful replies so far.

I found a very effective solution to the unhappiness, which had also begun to bother other cities than the capitol: One of my good cities had nothing very important to do, so I let it build the Eiffel Tower. As you know already, it creates a broadcast tower in each city, so I pushed the culture slider up to 10% and still managed to keep 70% science. No unhappiness problems for the rest of the game

This is on Noble and I guess you have to take some other measures on higher levels ...

ybrevo

[Blaupanzer]

Good find. I tend not to change the culture rate above 10%, so that didn't leap to mind.

Theaters, broadcast towers, and colisseums are all sensitive to the culture rate. As to happiness, the higher levels start with roughly one fewer initial smile (and health marker) per level going up the scale. As you know, less happiness is a bear to manage pre-Drama/Music.

[rah]

I always feel like a failure when I have to move the culture slider to 10%.
I rarely do it. It's a pride thing. I keep thinking back to Civ II and the council and Elvis pleading for luxuries.

[Blaupanzer]

I was always a sucker for Elvis on that first request as it justified all the cultural stuff I'd done.

[sorinache]

Good find. I tend not to change the culture rate above 10%, so that didn't leap to mind.

Theaters, broadcast towers, and colisseums are all sensitive to the culture rate. As to happiness, the higher levels start with roughly one fewer initial smile (and health marker) per level going up the scale. As you know, less happiness is a bear to manage pre-Drama/Music.

I almost never need to move the culture slider because I love religions and found on average 3 of them - that's 3 temples and one cathedral. Then I'm friendly and trade with almost everybody, so I have lots of luxury resources. And finally Im a builder (OR all the way) so my cities have everything they need. Even then, Colosseum is probably the building I build the least : it's simply not needed, people tend to be overly happy in my cities even without it ...

[rah]

Colosseums for me are fillers. Usually when I'm at war for a long time and the home folks are getting ansty, and I'm one or two turns from a new game changing military tech and I notice that the turns to build one matches up perfectly with getting the next tech.
If in a builder game, yes, rarely need them. But then my builder games are rare.

[wodan11]

I miss the Civ2 advisors.

Classic cheeky humor. Like Jack Burton or Monty Python.