[Civ 4] Game 4 - Team B - Page 3

On July 20 2010 10:02 igotmyown wrote:

The AI will not trade with you if you're their only contact unless they hit friendly. One AI has the same problems as isolation only less land and more competition. You keep them alive if there are 2 AIs, in which case they will trade.

If it is indeed one on one in isolation, you're far better off killing them if possible so you don't have to aggressively block off high distance cities, or as someone put it, "expand at your leisure".

Some basic searches will confirm this. People dislike semi-isolated starts just as much as isolated starts, unless you can kill them and get double the usual land.

You can get WK to friendly if you adopt his religion, caste system, and gift him a city, I believe. Just religion and caste will still be a random event/demand crap shoot.

if a tech does not enable any military or sea-exploration units, any non-religious buildings or any unbuilt wonders or projects, there will never be any monopoly whine, no matter the # of rivals that know the tech or the AI personality, even in semi-isolation.

On July 20 2010 10:45 Keilah wrote:
Any ideas on victory conditions if we don't do culture? I've actually never won a diplomatic/religious victory, could be interesting. Domination and conquest are not going to happen, unless people enjoy massive intercontinental wars on huge maps. Other than that it's culture or space race.

BTW, I endorse building a work boat to go explore. If it can't go anywhere, we're going to need it fairly soon for fish anyways.

On July 20 2010 10:51 Qatol wrote:I personally like trading for Alphabet, religion tech, and Monarchy, but maybe that's just me. Either way, I'm through arguing about this. It is obvious we aren't persuading each other anyways. You are the only one advocating an axe rush at this point, and you aren't even playing in this game. If you want to continue this discussion, PM me so we don't clutter the thread any more.

On July 20 2010 15:29 Lachrymose wrote:


wut? or you could keep debating it in this thread where people who aren't that good at the game can continue to learn the pros and cons of a semi isolated axe rush from different perspectives.

if people don't find this kind of thing interesting i struggle to imagine what they're reading this thread for and even then they can simply skip it and move on to the next report.

And semi-isolation trading, the problem is you won't be able to trade for aesthetics, literature, mathematics, calendar, code of laws, metal casting, philosophy, that is most of the beeline tech. And one of you has to tech alphabet to trade, and you certainly can't rely on the lone AI to do it in a timely fashion, so the main useful trade will be alphabet for monarchy.

On July 20 2010 15:49 igotmyown wrote:


Thanks for validating my efforts!

To be honest, a large part of my motivation is people saying "axe rushing is impossible/stupid", when it's a perfectly valid strategy in this situation, as opposed to an expectation that people will actually axe rush. I'm hoping my exhortations sound more like "this is the strategical breakdown of an axe rush" than "axe rush or else", and that it provides useful information.

Civilizaton IV is a deep game, and overly simplifying it will take away surprisingly effective ways of winning.

And semi-isolation trading, the problem is you won't be able to trade for aesthetics, literature, mathematics, calendar, code of laws, metal casting, philosophy, that is most of the beeline tech. And one of you has to tech alphabet to trade, and you certainly can't rely on the lone AI to do it in a timely fashion, so the main useful trade will be alphabet for monarchy.

On July 20 2010 20:23 DrainX wrote:
I'm kind of a newbie at civ 4. I usually win when playing noble and usually end up in the middle of the scoreboard when playing on prince. I was wondering what a good solid opening in civ 4 is. I usually just start out with building a warrior or something similar so that my starting town grows to size ~3 before I start building a settler so that the settler doesn't take too long to build. Once I have two cities up I invest in 2-3 workers then expand twice again.

Is it better to build a worker or settler first of before letting your city grow?

Which is best to build first? A workers or a settler? If this depends on you having found a good new site for a city yet or if the area around your first city has lots of resources that make building a worker important, what should I look for most when deciding this?

Should I focus on buildings like Granary/Lighthouse/Obelisk/Temple early on or should I wait with buildings like that until I have a couple of cities up and running (5-6?). I often build a granary as the first thing in a new city but I wonder if this is a good idea or not.

On July 20 2010 21:01 Zyphen[p] wrote:
I'm a noob too (Noble is cruise control, Prince can be a challenge but usually kind of easy; haven't really tried Monarch), but generally it's Worker first -> Warriors until size 3 -> Settler. There are some other openers I've heard of like Worker -> Warrior until 2 -> Settler and Worker -> Worker -> Settler with chopping, but that's the standard.

I usually make a Monument as first build if not Creative (for outer resources), and Granary if I am. Lighthouse is situational, I guess, but you probably shouldn't be building Temples first; you're not going to hit the happy cap that soon.

I aim for 6-10 cities by 1AD, depending on neighbor locations, terrain, blah. I usually don't ever build Workers, I just 2-pop whip them (grow to 4 or more, build a Worker for one turn, whip). I try to keep around an equal number of workers to cities, but I've heard worker count = 1.5 * city count is optimal.

Don't forget to scout well.

On July 20 2010 22:35 Qatol wrote:

Disclaimer: a lot of this is just my opinions or what I've seen from my experience. Also, because of the generality of the question, much of this is very general. I tried to cover all of the win conditions, but I admit I'm not as familiar with culture and diplomatic victories as I am with domination or space. If anyone has something they want to add, or they disagree on certain points, feel free to mention it.

First of all, don't worry horribly much about the scoreboard. It is a useful metric for seeing how you are doing, but it won't reflect the situation perfectly. Their score may be higher than yours, but you may have more appropriate technology for the situation. Or they may have a ton of land, but it's all ice and tundra and the cities don't actually pay for themselves. The AI will do silly things, like settle in the ice for a city that has 2 tundra fur and an iron. However, the scoreboard will give them points for land and population regardless of how good it is. Also, the scoreboard gives points for wonders, even the ones which aren't very good like Shwegdagon Paya or Chichen Itza. I'd rather have a little more infrastructure and be set up better for the late game personally.

The timing for the first settler is more situational than that. If you have enough high food squares that you can get up to your happy cap relatively quickly, it is quite handy to just grow to happy cap and alternate settlers and workers out of that town for a while. You want the warriors out to A. guard your towns B. explore the surrounding area C. give you vision of the surrounding area (barbarians will not spawn in squares that you can see, and are a bit less likely to spawn far away from you, so if you can put warriors or archers on hills around your city, you can really cut down on barbarian pressure), and D. kill the barbarians that do show up. I generally recommend that you focus on growing your city early and let the warriors come out while you are working those food tiles.

You usually want a worker or a work boat first. Working your special tiles gives a really big boost to your early production.

Generally, the first thing you want to look for when settling a city is how it will feed itself. Does it have food resources? Great! Does it have a river and some grassland? That will work too. Is it all hills and desert? Probably not the best location unless you absolutely need a resource in the area (like if it has a source of Iron and you don't have any other Iron/Bronze in the area at all plus it will take too long to get your borders over that land/ the land is in danger of being taken by someone else). Remember that Grasslands will not help nor hurt your growth at all. Plains will hurt your growth because they give only 1 food. Rivers can add +1 per square if you farm the tiles around them. Hills give -1 from whatever food production they would have given if that square was not a hill.

The next thing you want to look at is how you will pay for a city. Settling cities is expensive. You have to pay increasing upkeep for each city that you settle. If you settle too quickly, your tech rate will generally stagnate because all your commerce is going into paying for your cities instead of funding your research. In our situation, we can settle a little more freely/quickly than is standard because we have 2 gems in our starting town. However, I still think we should be settling near the double gems to the southwest relatively quickly to further boost our tech.

The third thing you should look for is your water situation. The limiting factor on city growth after you reach monarchy is generally health, not happiness. Settling next to a river or a fresh water lake can help this. It also helps your food situation because you can farm next to fresh water. This also means you should look at your situation with respect to coasts. You can only build a lighthouse if you are adjacent to a coastal square. Fresh water lakes do not count. However, if you have a lighthouse (you are on a coast and have lakes in your BFC), fresh water lakes will give you 3 food instead of 2. Coastal squares are generally bad to have if your city is not actually on a coast. Even if you are on the coast, you usually want land over water squares except in the city where you plan to make the Moai Statues, so try not to overdo it on the water squares. However, there are still situations where having ocean is okay in your BFC without being on the coast. Look at the conversation in Team A's thread for an example (gold + food > a few coast and desert).

The fourth thing you look for is how settling in that spot will affect the map with respect to other civilizations. If your borders go from coast to coast, the AI will not go through your borders and settle on the other side. This gives rise to the idea of "blocking the AI." You can block them away from wide swaths of land if you strategically place a few cities. This is more important on higher difficulty levels where the AI settles much more quickly (on deity they start with 2 settlers and will generally have 4-6 cities before you get your second).

The fifth thing you look at is hammers. How productive will this city be? Will you need to use Slavery to build anything useful in this town? In your cottage farm, it may not matter. However, it is good to have a production town or 2 to pump units so the AIs don't decide you are too weak and attack you. You usually want a few hills in your town's BFC. A small corollary to this: if you settle on a plains hill, your town's main square gives 2 hammers instead of 1. It provides a nice boost in the town's infancy.

Finally, you should look at how defensible your town is. Usually settling on hills provides cities that are more easily defended than settling on flat ground. Settling next to a bunch of hill forests may result in enemy units that are hard to dislodge (chopping said forests will make this easier, but it still isn't fun to dislodge units- especially celts- from hills). This only matters if you are settling near someone you expect to attack you at some point.

Either way, don't worry about every little square in your BFC. It is okay to have some desert if your town also has 2 corn and 2 gold or whatever. It isn't the end of the world if your cities overlap a little bit, especially if you were planning to use one of those cities to run specialists anyways. Make sure you have cities which can: settler/worker pump, provide research, provide great people, make units, give you money. And don't try to do it all in the same city.

I assume you are playing non-BTS or are playing as Egypt? Otherwise the Obelisk is called the Monument. In general, unless I am a creative leader or need a unit to protect this city (I usually have the unit to protect the town already made), or don't need the extra tiles, the first thing I make in a new town is a Monument. It builds relatively quickly, can be chopped out with 1 forest, and gives you access to all of the workable tiles in your city. After that, it often depends on what the city will be doing. Is growth really important in this city (because I am slaving or because this city is a little light on the food)? Granary is important. Does this city have a lot of food so I can run some scientists? Library might be nice. Does this city give me a lot of commerce? Library might be nice there too. Do I need a few more units to deal with the barbarians or a neighbor + this town has hammers? Units might be good. Just be careful not to overproduce units if you don't need them. They cost money to support and you could be using those hammers on something else, like building wealth or research. Granary first is usually not a terrible choice, especially as the Incas, but you should think about what the city will be doing for you and what you need at the moment.

You generally want some infrastructure before you settle beyond 3 cities. 5-6 cities quick will usually tank your economy. Getting the balance of expanding right just takes practice though. I'd say you should look to be able to keep your economy stable at 50% research most of the time. (Other people who know about this - is this number accurate? I'm so used to doing binary research I don't even look at numbers other than 0% or 100% any more except to finish a tech.) You usually should be going Settler -> Worker -> Worker -> Settler -> Worker -> Worker. Double expanding usually means you won't have enough workers.

On July 20 2010 15:59 Keilah wrote:
Pros:
-We will have more land than we can use before 1000AD (not actually a pro, lol)
-We will have another city in a good location, from their capital (gold, etc)
-We will get some pillage/city capture gold

Cons:
-We lose our (only?) trading partner
-We piss off his friends if he has any
-We spend a ton of resources on units that will do nothing for us after the war, because either we're isolated or they'll soon be obselete
-We will have distant cities in dubious locations (AI is bad at placement) costing us lots in maintenance and preventing us from expanding to nearer, better locations
-If we do anything other than completely crush him, we're going to lose to people on other continents
-We will not have developed any cottages because we'll be busy working food+hammer
-We will be low-tech because we've been busy working food+hammer
-We just eliminated someone, at great cost to ourselves, who we could have befriended and used to our advantage, at virtually no cost to ourselves
-We cripple our economy to take him out early, when he is strongest because of his protective trait, when we could let him develop cities, build wonders, etc for us, then take him out later when it's easier and less costly to do so


not sure if I missed anything, probably did.

Basically only axe rush if they are very close, it will be easy, and their land is better than ours.