Civ IV

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OK - I guess I'll see what happens then.

Turning to another subject regarding corporations...

My understanding is that upon founding a corporation, it takes a set of resources, and converts it into something else - like either additional food, hammers, culture, etc.

Let's take the Cereal Mills as an example, because I know what that one does without looking it up.

You take a great merchant and you found the corporation in a city that has access to corn, wheat, and/or rice. Let's just say for the sake of discussion that the civilizaiton in question has 3 corn resources, 2 wheat resources, and 1 rice resource. According to the description, it will give me 0.75 food in every city for every one of those resources it consumes. So 6 * 0.75 = 4.5 food. (I don't know how the computer treats half a food.)

My quesiton is what does "consume" mean in this context? Does it mean I cannot trade the resources to other civs? Are existing trade agreements with other civs involving this resource cancelled? Do I also lose the benefits those resources would give to me, as if I didn't have access to them at all? In the example above, those resources would give me +3 health in all my cities, and another +3 if I happened to have a granary located in the city as well. That seems like a pretty stiff price to pay for some extra food in each city (which will cause additional growth, exacerbating the unhealthiness in each city). And of course the same can be asked for other resources - if the corporation consumes a luxury resource, do I lose the happiness benefit? If it consumes a strategic resource do I lose the ability to make units which require that resource?

Second question: It seems like you get the total benefits of a corporation even if all you have are the headquarters. In the example above, it seems like I get the bonus food in all my cities regardless of whether or not I spread the corporation to other cities. If that is the case, what is the benefit of spreading the corporation? Does it work like a shrine in a holy city with additional corporations providing money each turn? If so, should you make the effort to export your corporation to other civs?

 

Can't answer all of your questions, Aldeth - in fact, I'd like to see those answers as well, because most of the corporation stuff is unclear to me as well - but I can tell you that while spreading your corporation to other cities is supposed to increase the revenue generated by that corporation, this will also cost you some form of upkeep.

This actually dropped my economy into a slump once, when I happily started spreading a corporation I'd just founded (Mining Inc, I believe) to most of my other cities. One of the load screens seemed to suggest that this would make me generate a lot more money, as the HQ is supposed to benefit from the extra franchises. However, I found that, depending on the city, these franchises cost me a lot of money each turn and I quickly dropped into the negative numbers per turn.

So spreading them around at random doesn't seem like a good idea. There's probably some strategy involved in this, but I haven't been able to plumb it yet.

 

You'll still get to keep the benefits from the resource (health or happiness bonus), but I don't think you can trade it. Wouldn't make much sense.

Yes, you should export corporations to other civs. Otherwise you won't make much money. When you spread the corporation, the other civ will pay the maintenance costs and you'll get the gold bonus. If the AI starts also spreading the corporation, it's basically free gold every turn. The other civ may, however, benefit from the corporation.

I don't think domestic spreading is very useful, unless you can efficiently use the bonus. With specialists the extra food might come in handy?

 

I really love Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc, it is basically extra food and shields at the cost of a little bit of gold you should easily be able to afford by the time you get the corporation. I prefer Sid's over Cereal since I usually always have a lot more sea food resources than I have wheat/corn/rice and it usually gives my cities an extra 4-6 food which means 2-3 extra specialists. As for mining inc, extra shields are always nice.

You gain one gold for every city with your corporation but every city also pays maintanence for that corporation and it differs depending on your civics. I usually get a message like this when I spread a corporation: Mining Inc has spread to Rome +8 shields -12g or thereabouts. The higher the benefit the higher the negative which can if you have loads of resources be a bit of a bummer. Played a custom game where I had built my own map where every sea square had a fish in it. I founded Sid's Sushi and the cities got like 40 extra food from it but I also had to pay literally thousands of gold in upkeep. Had to go state property to disable it.

 

Found your corporation in the city that has the Shrine and Wall Street to get a mega kicker to your Headquarter income. It's all about synergy again. If you found your corporation in a dud city somewhere, then the headquarter benefits will outweighed by the maintenance costs (unless all the branches are in foreign countries).

 

Do you guys use alot of workshops? I think that is one thing that I may overlook. It would make sense in food rich areas with little production.

Also, what promotions do you give siege equipment? I have been doing alot of city raider, but am looking more at the one that helps withdraw out of combat if they are losing.

What is the promotion path for blitz as well? for horse archers?

 

I have never seen any use of workshops whatsoever. Cottages gives a much bigger benefit and a lack of shields in one city is easily made up by the money you make by cottages or even specialists I wager. Not the theoryciver Harbs is and I am interested in his input but I personally never ever build workshops and replace them asap on conquered lands.

 

Like everything else in this game, you build workshops when their impact supports your specific objectives. For example:
- in your Ironworks city where you want to maximise every single possible hammer
- you're running State Property (as this gives +1 food back on workshops)
- you're in the final push to build your spaceship parts and you no longer care about science or food and all you need is hammers, you replace all your farms and cottages with workshops to get your spaceship launched a few turns earlier.

There's no hard and fast rules. Workshops definitely have their place, so long as you use them properly.

 

Finally, a cultural victory on Prince difficulty! It took a lot longer than I had planned (1947 AD) due to some bad decisions and lacking use of artists, but a win is a win. Played with Elizabeth who proved to be an excellent choice: no financial problems and a steady flow of Great Artists from 1500--> . I didn't stop my research at Liberalism, I researched both Rifling and Banking to get Redcoats and Stock Exchange - after that it was just culture.

I almost managed to stay out of wars, but then Louis XIV sneak attacked me near the end. Luckily, I had built a decent navy which totally destroyed his fleet. Weirdly enough, no one else tried to attack. Although the final part was somewhat boring (or at times filled with fear), it was a very educational game.

 

Good work Kullervo. When playing as England against uncertain opponents, teching to Rifling can be a sensible choice for Redcoats, and then turning off science completely at that point.

Well done, Cultural on Prince is no mean feat. What's the next challenge?

 

Playing my first prince game and getting out teched fast. I wonder if i should take tech brokering off...but then again, that is something that is probably useful if learned correctly. Anyone have any tips for staying ahead in tech or at least keeping up?

 

I believe I have already commented on a similar question earlier in this thread but I'll recap the 101 of the tech race:
- at Prince level, you should be able to maintain parity with the AI simply through your own self generated beakers - either through a dedicated cottage economy or a dedicated specialist economy.
- at Prince levell, you should easily be able to pull ahead of the AI through tech trading. Research the techs that the AI don't bother with (like Paper) and sell it off to everyone for loads of other techs and gold
- at Prince level, getting Civil Service from Oracle might be a bit tricky, so why not go for the Metal Casting or Code of Laws slingshots? Once you get one of those, it'll take the AI ages to catch up, by which time you should have made the most of that advantage
- use that advantage to be first to Liberalism and get something decent from that and hey presto, the game should well on the way to being won by then.
- get Oxford University up as quickly as possible. Chop or whip the required universities if need be.

And remember that a tech lead is not required to win the game (except if going for Space Colony). All other victory conditions do not require (and can even be hindered) by worrying too much about a tech lead. Ever been ambushed by a huge stack of obsolete enemy units? That should teach you that a big army can often beat a newer, smaller army with the right tactics.

 

It's either space race or a proper diplomatic victory, with the extra goal of getting more consistent with this difficulty level. Or it might be time to tackle Civ4:Colonization .

 

Colonization was quite the letdown, fun for a game or two but very limited in the gameplay. It is basically the same as the old game and even if that was a great game we tend to expect more from games nowadays. A lot of fun until you beat it though, then well every round of Civ is different not so in Colonization.

 

I agree with joa regarding workshops in that I build very few of them. HB is correct that if you run State Property (something I don't do often) that it gets rid of the -1 food cost associated with the workshop. This thing is, I usually can get adequate production out of my cities without making workshops. A couple of mined hills in your city's radius is usually adequate for production.

If you run a cottage economy, then once you get liberalism and democracy, the cottage economy gets hugely powerful. You can run civics that give big bonuses to all of your cottages, and make them upgrade to the next level much quicker.

 

I actually watched a few games on youtube and learned how to properly tech broker and how to better use science cities. For the first time, I used great people and scientist to get a city that was pumping out 380 plus beakers per turn which helped out quite a bit. I have a question about great people.

When you use specialist of a certain type in a city (scientist for example) does that increase the likelihood of that type of great person? or is that only dictated by Wonders and national wonders?

 

The Great Person type from a city is determined by both the wonders and the specialists used.

 

Right - but to clarify HB's point, it's just the regular run-of-the-mill specialists that affect great people production, not the super specialists you can settle in a city. So if you settle a great scientist in a city, it does not affect the chances of your next GP being a great scientist. However, increasing the number of regular scientist specialist in a city will increase the chance of producing a great scientist.

As an aside, you probably wouldn't want to settle a great scientist in a city. You're generally better off using your great scientist to build an academy. The academy gives +50% beakers, which for any decently developed city will be more than the beakers you get for making the great scientist a super specialist.

I definitely use different great people for different reasons depending on what victory condition I'm going for. However, I hardly ever settle a GP as a super specialist.

 

Yeah, I never settle scientists either. Depending on when I get them, I will either bulb the tech unless it is useless to my goals or i would build an academy in one of my "science" cities. I also used caste system and the other "specialists economy" civics for the first time and found it to be quite useful. Since I love to have a very large military, I was usually turned off from using all the civics but it wasnt as bad or as costly as i thought it would be. The science teching was so much faster thanks to also using a financial civ (capac) and I actually had two cities pumping out a ton of science. My only mistake was that I built the oracle in my capital (science city) so i didnt get as many great scientist as I should have but at least im starting to see the power of specializing cities. I think that I have to work on city placement as some of the cities that I am placing for my production only grow to size 9 or 10. I deally, I want a city like I had in my last game. able to grow to 21 and pump out units like there is no tomorrow. I just think that i focus too many of my early cities in the hilly regions where there is lack of food, but plenty of hammers. Also your thoughts on overlapping cities. Is it true that two cities can work the same square? Is this why i see the computer building their cities so close together?

 

Two cities cannot work the same square, although it is sometime useful to overlap cities anyway. Say you find a region with a bunch of resources you want to exploit, but you're using the slavery civic, and you know you're going to be whiping a lot of production, keeping your population size small. In such instances, it can be useful to overlap cities so that you can continually use all of the great resources. Having three or four resources doesn't do you any good if you can typically only be working two of them at a time.