Civ IV

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No, you can change which city uses the square but you can't have them both using it. Overlapping cities is a viable option if you have enough food to get by. You can get two cities using more ressources earlier rather than one that will take ages to get to use every ressource there is in its fat cross. Bear in mind that it is better used in really rich areas.

The AI is not a good indication on city placement as it often settles cities in poorly chosen locations. It also has a habit of building cities on top of ressources which isn't such a good idea as you lose the benefits of improving that tile.

You should use the BUG mod if you don't use it yet. It will provide quick information that require a lot of scrolling around in the vanilla game.

 

Will the bug mod work with warlords? I am currently just running that as I dont have BTS yet.

 

I haven't got the slightest idea about that. BTS is really good though and if you like the game that much you should definitely get it.

 

The quality of advice on this thread has improved markedly from when it started. I find that I am disagreeing with less and less comments.

The only point I will raise here is that the best players will very seldom build more than one Academy. In the perfect games, you know exactly when each great person is going to arrive and what it will be, and you time your research so that the tech that the great person will lightbulb is exactly the tech you want. When you can achieve that, then lightbulbing a tech now is miles better than a steady stream of beakers from a second Academy. A first Academy in your Oxford University/Bureaucracy capital city is the exception because the multiplied beakers from that will be huge.

 

OK, I won a diplomatic victory - just barely - there were seven civs, and I only managed to get two of them (Augustus and Hatshepsut) and myself to vote for me. I was playing Huayna Capac. And the only reason I got those two to like me was because I declared war on Brennus, who they were both at war with. I ended up winning the diplomatic victory by just 4 votes out of nearly 1000 votes cast. (Surprisingly, Brennus abstained. He must have been on poor terms with Gilgamesh as well.) So far, I've been able to acheive most victory conditions on the first or second try.

I must say that the diplomatic victory ending was pretty lame. All that happens is they show the other world leaders with you in the middle. No video? What a ripoff.

Even though I went for a diplomatic victory, I did make use of my quechas early in the game. I was the only person left standing on my starting continent from pretty darn early in the game. Quechas are almost not fair. Two of them are pretty much all that is required when attacking an enemy city if they do not yet have axemen. Of course, once axemen appear on the scene, you're pretty much out of luck in terms of easy city pillaging.

I actually built the Colossus - a wonder I almost never built - because it was almost free. An industrious leader with access to copper resulted in me being able to build the Colossus in just 13 turns on Epic game speed. It usually takes me longer than that to build a temple so early in the game. Granted the +1 gold on sea squares when you're playing a financial leader isn't huge - you are already getting the bonus gold on all the costal squares - but still, if you can easily fit a wonder into your plans, why not?

I am still uncertain if I am prepared enough to go up to Prince difficulty. There are still some aspects of the game where I am uncertain if I am proficient enough to try a higher difficulty. For example, in the games where I have had successful mililtary compaigns, it was always because I was technologically superior. I always rush to get to some unit (preferably my UU) and have something that's better than anything anyone else has. When I won a conquest victory with the Vikings, it was because I rushed to get to Berserkers for my early expansion. Since I got them before my enemy was able to build longbowmen or macemen, I easily routed them. I didn't even have to bring catapults - Berserkers with Combat I and City Raider I (and needing just one combat victory to get City Raider II) were able to stomp anything.

I have never willfully entered into a protracted war when I am on an equal footing as my opponent - wars are just too damn expansive for that. The AI is pretty single-minded in it's focus when it comes to wars. They usually pick one city, and do everything they can to take that one city. If you can deduce ahead of time which city that will be, and properly garrison that city, the AI will just keep banging it's head against that wall. That happened in a previous game with Montezuma. I knew the city that would be attacked was one where the continent was only one tile thick. He had to take that city to access any other part of my civilization. I built walls, and stuck two axemen, two archers, and a spearmen unit behind the walls, and there's really nothing he could do to get through that. You later upgrade to macemen, longbowmen, and pikemen, and all is good.

On a completely different note, is it just me that finds it annoying that three civilizations have some version of the monument as their UB, but none of the four leaders you can pick from is charasmatic? It would seem like a natural fit.

 

I think you can

I currently play on prince and can manage to win some games. I think you can win easily on prince since you understand the game way more than I do.

I tried a few games last night and ran into some problems as usual. Prince setting, standard map. I generally try to play as financial or organized civs until I get better. In both of my games last night, I got a good early rush where I was able to eliminate one of the sims before they could put up a second city. In my first game, I pulled off a successful skirmisher rush and eliminated the russians with Mali..so I had two prime capital spots to start. I expanded out to six cities before the computer eventually took all of the good land. 15 turns later, the french dow on me and took one of my cities. I eventually got peace, built an army and took out all of their cities except their capital (I razed almost every city except the one I recapped just because I was so angry which ultimately cost me I think ). So now the French are no threat anymore, but I look at the score and ghandi is pulling ahead substantially. For some reason he techs like a monster!!!! I had terrible research and was falling behind in the tech race, so I figured that I would attack ghandi to weaken him so that he cant just sit in his cities and tech (btw ghandi had like 12 cities to my 5..I dont understand how the computer can expand like that without crashing their economy since I can hardly eveer expand more than 7 cities without research going to 20 percent). I attack ghandi and get two of his cities and then get peace. He is still teching like a monster and leading by a considerable margin. I decide to build up my cata and elephant army before he can get rifling or calvary. While building up my army, he dow and two turns later I see calvary........lol. So it was pretty much game over from there. I think that my war with the French was too long ....30 plus turns. And also, I think I sitll have civ3 fever where I tend to build buildings in cities that dont really fit. Also, my tech rate wasnt up to par, but that could be that i built too many units as well.

I started a new game with Shaka. Now I have Napolean, monte, Victoria and of course ghandi and Mansa...(I am starting to Ghadi) I build only 4 cities in this one with plans to take some of Vickis cities since she is on my border. In this game, I built mostly farms so I could whip more efficiently since the game before I mostly cottaged and had trouble growing back pop afterwards.

The first quick war was an axe rush on three of vicki's cities where I razed one and kept the other two production focused cities. So now I have 6 decent sized cities, but look at the score and napolean and ghandi are leading but only by 200 pts this time. I decided that ghandi would be my next target. I built cats and elephants mixed with the experienced axes that I had from the English war. I took two of ghandis cities, but I look up and gold is gone and my workeers/ troops are striking. So i basically had to built wealth to keep the workers from striking and to keep the research at 50 percent...If i had taken it off, I would have had to keep research at 10 percent with only 8 cities around 900 ad( with courthouses in them as well). I think my problem this game was that I had no commerce cities which crippled me when I built a large army. Most of my cities had farms and hills and very few cottages

I noticed that when I won this weekend as Capac, my capital was a science and commerce generating machine. I think I had something like 5 resources in my bfc including 3 fish, 1 crab, and iron. Everything else was cottaged up and i had the colossus wonder. So I think from now on i will focus my coastal cities as commerce center, unless they have alot of hills around. In my first game yesterday, I cottaged everything, but I whipped too much and only had 5 or 6 cities...so thats a problem. in my second game, i dont think I had one commerce city....which is prolly why I bankrupted.

 

Courthouses are essential. Code of Laws should be an early goal, after you get some basic necessities, like bronze working, and whatever techs you need to access early resources. You definitely should be getting CoL long before you think about things like Calendar, Monarchy, and Drama. If you have a courthouse in every city, and a decent amount of gold producing squares in each city, you should be able to maintain your research at 50% or better. The only way around this is to run a specialist economy, and get most of your research from your specialsts (mostly scientists, obviously).

 

Yeah, I think I need to balance cities and take better worker actions.

I also farmed flood plains instead of cottaging them........I think I was tired

 

It's not that bad if you're using the extra food to run specialists.

One thing that I overlooked when I started playing this game is that you actually need to work cottages for them to grow into towns...

 

Well done, Aldeth. We told you that Huyana Capac was a monster!

I know you could win at Prince level. Civ IV isn't rocket science and you're a smart guy.

Just remember that it's all about having a strategy and doing the little things right, especially in the early part of the game. If you really nail the first 50 - 100 turns, then it makes a massive difference. Pay close attention to exactly what tiles are being worked, and what tiles are being improved. An early worker steal is worth more than you think.

 

Yeah, and of course I was not.....lol

I run into issues with the happy cap as well, which screams running more specialists early to cap growth until i can get some buildings in there.

 

True - one more food that you can suck out of a farm on grasslands. However, I usually do build cottages on flood plains - especially good for a financial leader - because you get two more gold for the cottage.

Evidently, it's something I've been overlooking right up until now. You mean if you aren't actively working the tile the cottage is on, it won't ever get bigger?

EDIT: One thing I've been thinking is that Expansive and Charismatic (Washington) may be an interesting choice for a leader. Bonus to happiness and health in all your cities, and a bunch of cheap early buildings to get you started. Not sure what a good victory condition would be for sure, although it seems like your wasting the trait if you're not taking advantage of the -25% needed to level up your units.

 

i just read somewhere about a strat where once you get libraries in all your cities you set the binary research to 0 % Can someone elaborate on this and how it works?

 

That sounds like a specialist economy if I ever heard of it. I imagine the thinking is that you get all your beakers from scientists in the city. That obviously would require a library, and it also would require caste system to maximize the number of scientists you can get. However, such a strategy would be best implemented in conjunction with representation, which is a long way away. I'm not sure how viable that strategy is in the very early going. You'd certainly build almost exclusively farms...

 

Yes, that's what I mean.

Pyramids?

 

As Caradhras said, that is how it works. Didn't you ever see the message when you hover your mouse over a cottage that wasn't being worked, that the cottage needed to be worked to advance to the next level? (Instead of the number of turns needed for the cottage to turn into the next level.) Or am I the only one here that improves tiles even if I can't work them right then? (Quite possible, I suppose, I am a noob after all.)

 

Yes to everything.

You have to work cottages for them to grow into towns, hence the reason why this can be a compelling indication for overlapping cities so that all good quality tiles are being worked. No point have 20 cottages in your BFC if only 3 of them are being worked.

And yes if you build libraries to run scientists and build Pyramids for early access to representation then you can set your science to zero. This works better for Philosophical leaders than Financial leaders, who will be better off with cottages (as Aldeth has pointed out).

 

Oh, I certainly improve tiles even if I cannot work them immediately. Practically every city in my civilization will build a worker as one of the early builds, and I will continue to improve tiles unitl there are no tiles left to improve. I'll even go so far as to build roads on deserts and snow - you never know when you will find a special resource on them later in the game, and it will cut down the time to access them if you already have a road built to the tile.

My first attempt on Prince went very poorly. Good gaming tip: If you're playing on Prince difficulty for the first time, you should probably start over if you find yourself starting between Sitting Bull and Tokugawa, and you need to expand early. While clearly not impossible, it's makes expansion much more difficult when you are sandwiched between two protective leaders who make archery a priority. (And frankly, if you're protective, why WOULDN'T you make archery a high priority tech?) I got iron hooked up early, and I sent six swordsmen with City Raider I, and they were unable to take out two archers and an axemen (well technically a dog warrior). How disappointing. Then Tokugawa got annoyed with me and attacked, and I cast Power Word: Exit to Desktop.

 

I usually use bigger cities to spam workers (except in the early game of course) because it will slow down the growth of your new cities. Building a worker takes only a few turn for a big city (which won't grow anyway) and you get that worker sooner so you can get new improvements sooner too.

Don't forget that forts will allow you to get a ressource when you learn the tech that unlocks it. So you can build forts to get oil without having to build a well (it goes without saying that you don't benefit from the tile improvement so forts are not replacements but are useful for convenience nevertheless).

Being stuck between two protective leaders doesn't sound like fun. My advice would be to go for an early rush with warriors and or chariots but that won't work without lots of warriors and some luck. If you wait for other units like swordsmen you're out of luck because once the culture bonus kicks in protective archers are very hard to destroy (it would take a very large attack force). In that situation I'd tech for construction and get as many catapults as possible.

Never underestimate the value of siege units in this game. Not even protective units can withstand a well prepared attack with siege units.

 

Another thing I never knew!!! And you're right - oil is the only resource that the tech required to access it is further down the tech tree than the tech that reveals it. (Well, I guess all the plantation requiring resources technically count too - you can see them from the beginning of the game, but you cannot build forts at the beginning of the game either, and if you have plantation requiring resources, chances are you'll make acquiring Calendar a bigger priority.)

I thought I could do it without the catapults. Since I got iron hooked up early, I thought swordsmen would work. In hindsight, my real mistake was going after Sitting Bull. He was closer to me, and seemed the more immediate threat, but that was poor strategy on my part. You don't need any resource for dog warriors, and Sitting Bull had archery, so he was fielding some pretty good units. On the other hand, delaying the war with Tokugawa meant I would likely be facing Samauri, which is never a good idea if it can be avoided.