[Civ 4] Game 4 - Team B

On July 19 2010 01:47 Qatol wrote:
We absolutely should not be axe rushing Wang. We have double gems and more gems nearby. We even got a peninsula. Just block him from expanding in our direction and then we can fill up our peninsula nicely. An axe rush would just slow down our expansion and get rid of someone who would be a nice trading partner, boosting our tech through the early game. I think we should be settling near those mountains relatively soon to try and keep Wang from taking too much land in our direction. After that, we need to secure those other gems so we can get our tech up and running nicely.

On July 19 2010 01:56 Biochemist wrote:


These exact thoughts were going through my head, too. Settling quickly in his direction doesn't give us a very nice city right now though, since there's a lot of calendar resources there that are buried in jungle. Maybe there's something nice hidden in that strip of black. Where do you think the best city spot is?

On July 19 2010 05:01 igotmyown wrote:
Should have gone agriculture first so you could grow with a decent food resource.

BW first means you can't grow efficiently, so you'll have to rely on chopping out the worker worker settler build, make sure your 1st warrior comes back in time to guard the second city location, and expand really fast.

On the plus side, you can axe rush if you find bronze, and Wang Kon is in a decent position to axe rush. The biggest reason not to rush a close opponent is that there's another AI on the other side of you who's going to suck up the land you would have expanded had you rapid expanded. You can always settle the northwest at your leisure, and wang kon's double gold will further fund breakneck expansion.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=352842 is the best technical axe/chariot rush guide on the site.
You get a 3rd worker with an axe rush, though, and you're usually better off getting the second worker in the capital while the second city grows to a bit.

On July 19 2010 05:49 Lunaticman wrote:
It's hard to decided what to do at least for me since we have to much black on the map but an axe rush needs bronze and unless we find it in a good position we shouldn't consider it (not yet anyway).

I like the advice on trying to expand until there is no more room and use Wang as a trading partner. Depending on if we can discover other civilizations and especially important what religion will be spread/used on our continent we should make war/peace.

It is still a bit to early to look for a victory condition even though it is good to set them early (are we going for a cultural/space race etc.?) but finding a good second and third spot for our cities are key to better understanding our long term goals.

That's it for now keep going guys!

PS: Should we find some form of theme for our cities name? I suggest Progamers!

On July 19 2010 05:18 Qatol wrote:

Again I'll say it. An axe rush would be a terrible idea from this position. A chariot rush is even worse (they would have to go through all that jungle and are weaker than axemen when it comes to attacking). We have enough high commerce resources in our area as it is. We should be focusing on blocking Wang from expanding towards us and then we can take the high commerce squares and get our tech going. Heck, even our leader's traits are better suited to expanding rather than rushing. And we will get left behind the civs on other continents if we don't have a trading partner in the early parts of the game. We haven't found anyone other than Wang so far, and he's a pretty good trading partner, especially with early gold. We can take Wang out later in the game when we actually need to take his land. Right now we don't need it and our economy couldn't support the land if we were to take it. An axe rush WILL hurt us a lot more than it helps.

I fully agree that we should have gotten Agriculture first though so we can work the corn. I thought we had done that. Nothing we can do about that now though. What we CAN do is get it up next and chop a forest after we get at the very least that grassland gem mined. Just don't chop out a warrior. If we're chopping, it needs to be a second worker to help us develop our area a bit more.

On July 19 2010 11:34 igotmyown wrote:
Since this is just general information, a well built axe/chariot rush is a pretty sure thing on immortal (normal speed), except in certain situations (skirmishers, they start with copper). You have to learn the window and not waste worker turns/production/build wasteful stuff. If you attack too early, you won't be able to overwhelm their free archers. If you attack too late, they've hooked up iron too long and pumped multiple axes. So the target attack size is about 10 axes/14 chariots vs 3 to 4 archers/axes, max of one axe, as fast as possible, chopping as much as you need to. You can also choose to whip the last round and even skip the barracks in the second city if your window looks too tight.

If you go writing right after bw/ah, then wheel, you can tech about halfway to alphabet/aesthetics, then use conquest gold to get the rest of the way (or save and go binary research after a library), and you've regained tech parity.

It will work in certain situations in deity, although you won't always be able to kill them outright.

On July 19 2010 12:34 Keilah wrote:
OMG, if you guys axe rush I will seriously declare war on every single civ we meet. Axe rushing would be amazingly bad.

Looking at our land, even though we have more than we need, this looks like a super-easy cultural victory for us. Take the cow/elephant site for a decent second city. Capital + land to southwest of capital for cottages and gems that will pump tech --> culture, and take the cow/rice/fish in the northwest for a GP farm. EDIT: loaded the save and in 2 turns we're about to discover a plains hill with 2 fish and banana to the east of the cow/elephant city, THAT is the GP farm. Plenty of other land to settle some auxiliary cities to make temples and stuff.

Some of you are making strategy mistakes that come from single-mindedness. 'I must control the expansion opportunities of my opponents. Destroying an opponent early is good'. NOPE. Look at our land! We're at the end of a peninsula with a protective, easy-ish to get along with civ as our barrier to the outside world. Don't settle anywhere NEAR him, we don't need close borders sparking tensions or giving him ideas about backstabbing us. Be ultra-friendly with him, and he will accelerate our tech without ever being a threat. Nobody is going to invade us this entire game, and we're not going to invade anyone else, either. Cultural victory pre-1500 AD, guaranteed.


Even IF you wanted to beat Wang Kon 1v1 style, the way would be to wait for elephants and catapults, instead of blocking his early expansion ability by taking crappy jungle land that only prevents us from immediately taking the awesome land being handed to us on a platter.

Also, please don't steal his worker, he will likely make us his worst enemy, not worth it at all.

On July 19 2010 22:38 Keilah wrote:
try opening the game, selecting hot seat, and loading the game from there. I assume you already tried double clicking the file

On July 19 2010 23:49 Ver wrote:
Civ is like a card game where you are dealt a hand (starting position) and have to base your strategy around that hand. Trying to do an axe rush or praet rush (like last game) regardless of position is nonsensical because most of the time there will be better options. Yes it is Monarch and the start position is very good, meaning you can do anything and win, but there's no reason to justify a poor strategy because of that. If this position was the same, just on Deity, Axe rushing would be completely moronic and would certainly fail.

Wang Kon is hardly going to declare war on you unless you totally bungle diplomacy, so there's no need to be afraid. This looks to be a good position to use the most 'core' Civ strategy: Liberalism rush through bulbing -> Renaissance War (Rifles/Cav). As this is a huge map you will need 8 cities to get Oxford/Globe access; that means blocking off Wang with the initial cities somewhere near the visible resources between you and any available fresh water in the fog. There are plenty of commerce resources, with some food, and very little fresh water/no rivers. Later on the terrain is great for a hammer economy, while for now it seems hybrid is best.

On July 20 2010 07:17 igotmyown wrote:


Your situational analysis is missing one of the most important elements: you're in semi-isolation, so you're zero sum with Wang Kon. Any land that he has, you will have to spend even more to take later. People do elephant catapult wars because it works and it gets land, not because it's cheap or transitions well techwise.
All the rest of the land is uncontested.
This is how it breaks down: I rush WK and gain the land around him and to the west via settling afterwards.
Or I do not rush WK, and gain the land to the west, and part of the land around WK.

The downfall of rushing isn't jungles or a capital a little over 10 tiles away on a large map. It is, like on the Julius Caesar attempt, the n-2 AIs sucking up the land you would have settled to. The AI could be 6 tiles away, but rushing would be a bad idea if you're land centered on a pangea map surrounded by land hungry AI. If there were an AI to the west, rushing would be a terrible idea because of the aforementioned reason.

On July 20 2010 08:04 Qatol wrote:

And you're neglecting the most important reason NOT to rush. You said it yourself, we are in semi-isolation. At this point, we have not found anyone other than Wang. With this map type (fractal), we may not find anyone other than Wang before Astronomy.

You linked to civfanatics, so I assume you have read that forum a bit. Do you know why the top players hate isolated starts? It is really hard to compete when you don't have trading partners to help backfill your tech. Do you know why the top players there don't like playing Mansa as much as someone like Darius, Elizabeth, Pacal, or Huayna? A big reason (though not the only reason) is because he is the best AI techer in the game, and isn't stingy about trading, so they like to have a chance to have him in the game and trade.

You're advocating killing off someone who not only is unlikely to attack us, but is also a decent techer and the only AI we have found, which could basically turn our start into an isolated start. Bad idea.

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.

On July 23 2010 02:01 briann wrote:
normal, basically what i did was built my city then told my warriors to auto explore, researched a bunch of stuff and at the same time my workers ( 1st unit i built ) were done i found enemy and dec war. then they attacked and instantly killed my city because there was nobody to defend ( my troops were a bit too slow and were like 2 turns behind.

vs ai easiest mode.
duel size map .
normal speed.

On July 23 2010 02:14 MTF wrote:


Don't declare war on somebody when you have nothing to defend yourself with, especially on such a small map size and that quick a speed. War also has other consequences, such as creating unhappiness (which causes your population to stop working tiles) in your cities over time. So, I'd advise against randomly declaring war on everyone you meet in the future. :p

I mostly learned Civ by playing, though I picked up tips from reading the forums at Civ Fanatics and from watching a few playthroughs by TheMeInTeam. Good luck, have fun!

On July 23 2010 12:00 Keilah wrote:
I think this game will be so easy, that I'm going to stop posting advice. GL everyone =]

On July 23 2010 00:53 briann wrote:
sry to post here but just started playing the game and it seems really intimidating with all the options is there a good tutorial somewhere, i did not see a beginner tutorial mission
( bought a pack of all the civ 4 stuff so i assume beyond the sword is what i should be using.)

On July 23 2010 11:17 Qatol wrote:
I didn't get a PM, but I got the save anyways. Glad to see we aren't actually semi-isolated. I'll play my turns either tonight or tomorrow. Either way, I should have my post up tomorrow.

A few questions:

Why are we getting the wheel so early? I mean, it isn't a TERRIBLE choice, but I would rather either get Writing faster or Sailing. Either way, getting out the first Great Scientist will give us a nice boost to tech, especially with the capital we have.

Why wasn't the corn farmed the second agriculture was done? It is less important for us to get the mine up on the copper than it is for us to get that food up and running as quickly as possible.

Why was the second warrior fortified in the city? Barbarians won't enter your borders until there are 2*N cities on the continent, where N is the number of civilizations on the continent. This means that our second warrior should be out fogbusting for us. We can use a later warrior to fortify in the city.

On July 23 2010 12:45 Zyphen[p] wrote:

Sorry, forgot to pass on the PM. Good to know you got the save, though.


Writing was my other consideration, but I was thinking of hooking up the Copper first.


Pretty sure I did do that. If not, I think we lost what, two turns?


If you read my post, the Warrior finished on my last turn, and fortifying it was a placeholder for the next player.

On July 23 2010 14:15 Zyphen[p] wrote:
Ah, no problem. And yeah, I agree with you that we need to focus on growth - really needed that Corn up earlier, but what can yeh do. Just wondering, why Sailing? Writing / GS I understand, but is it just for seaside trade routes?

I remember making a mental note to interrupt the copper mine to farm the Corn, but we all know how those work ("whoops, I let that failgold wonder complete....")

On July 23 2010 22:28 Dobrev wrote:
I don't like the idea of two teams compeating each other so I am dropping out. Have fun.

On July 24 2010 07:39 igotmyown wrote:
Whipping is mathematically inferior to building workers/settlers straight up, especially without a granary. Whipping with a granary still only generates about 1.5-2 hammers per turn on average.

Example: you grow from size 2 to 3 (12 x 2 = 24 food), taking 5 turns, then start a worker and whip. Those 5 turns of growth, you could generate 7 food+hammers with corn/gems, 7 x 5 = 35 > 30, 10 food+hammers with corn/copper, 10 x 5 = 50 > 30.
As the hammer:food ratio increases, whipping and regrowing gets worse and worse for pure worker/settler production.
If you look up vocum insineratio for whipping, it concludes whipping special tiles and grassland mines is counterproductive, while whipping plains hills is good.

Early copper is far superior to gems for expansion attempts.

On July 24 2010 11:35 Keilah wrote:


A little confusing... for example, where does 12 x 2 come from? In our epic game, growth takes 33 food for 1 -> 2, and 36 for 2 -> 3. I guess the 24 in normal speed = 36 epic, but I still don't understand 12 x 2.

Doesn't change much, but I believe gems + corn = 8 food+hammers, not 7?

Not sure how to calculate this, but don't forget that we can be putting our hammers into something else while growing, then trade some population for an instant worker.

Anyways, without doing the math myself, I suspect working high yield tiles like corn and copper will be more efficient than whipping, but what I would do is allow the city to grow while working our best tiles, perhaps building a granary in the meantime, and then whipping once we get a population point working an inferior tile/being unhappy.

Definitely agree that copper > gems for getting an expansion out fast, but we're in no rush and I think the commerce from the gems would be superior.


@ the guy who just played: In one screenshot I can see you building a settler/worker while working the lake instead of the copper. Definitely not optimal.

On July 26 2010 10:02 Keilah wrote:
Why does the land look so much more pretty on Lexpar's system than anyone else's, including my own? I thought I had the graphics settings turned all the way up. What's your secret Lex?

Place the 2nd city 1 SW of the elephants, it steals land from the capital but it won't ever become an issue. 2S of the elephants could also be good, it loses coastal but it gains spices and maybe dyes? I wasn't too sure when looking at the map.

On July 26 2010 10:02 Keilah wrote:
Why does the land look so much more pretty on Lexpar's system than anyone else's, including my own? I thought I had the graphics settings turned all the way up. What's your secret Lex?

Place the 2nd city 1 SW of the elephants, it steals land from the capital but it won't ever become an issue. 2S of the elephants could also be good, it loses coastal but it gains spices and maybe dyes? I wasn't too sure when looking at the map.

On July 26 2010 11:07 Qatol wrote:

No dyes for 2S. One of my screenshots shows that area decently well. Why not aim for a spot which helps block a bit better, has fresh water, or start the GP farm? Your spots don't seem to be as good as the GP farm or have much in the way of blocking power. Personally, I'd start up the GP farm.

On July 26 2010 12:39 Keilah wrote:


Because it's too far away and we didn't have enough workers, a way to pop borders, or iron working yet. Better to start up a nearby city that can be improved, then spread out. We also don't care about fresh water except in our three best cities, and unfortunately there's not much to be found. We'll just have to trade for health resources, which is fine because we're planning to be friendly.
Also I think the spot 2S of the elephants is the only reasonable choice for Korea-blocking, since they aren't going to spread so far as to take our GP farm land just yet. Note: d'oh on missing the horses, but I didn't know they were there until after the city was settled. Oh well.

Note to future leaders: Give in to EVERY demand of every civ, except the ones that cause bad relations with other civs (don't stop trading or declare war just because someone demands it). As long as we aren't killed by a hostile military, nobody is a threat to us because we're going to reach victory hundreds of turns before they come close. So wussified diplomacy is the name of the game. We're going to need more workers than usual (jungles), and less defenders than usual (peacemongering). Remember that we're going to be running pacifism fairly soon. Fogbusting to prevent barbarians >>> having enough units that we completely don't fear barbarians.

On July 27 2010 09:53 igotmyown wrote:
Since a lot of people have been leaning towards expanding with all the good land, people might want to expand more aggressively and take the land. Needs more settlers, fogbusters, workers.
Tech is very nice and all, but if you're way out-teching what you will use (for example, we have writing, but our capital would be better off building another settler than a granary/library), there's no advantage versus having a lower tech rate.

And if you have cows, you want to tech to pasture them immediately.

On July 27 2010 09:53 igotmyown wrote:
Since a lot of people have been leaning towards expanding with all the good land, people might want to expand more aggressively and take the land. Needs more settlers, fogbusters, workers.
Tech is very nice and all, but if you're way out-teching what you will use (for example, we have writing, but our capital would be better off building another settler than a granary/library), there's no advantage versus having a lower tech rate.

And if you have cows, you want to tech to pasture them immediately.

On July 27 2010 17:05 Zyphen[p] wrote:
"Not to be a dick," but I did read that page, and I recall that it recommended use of the culture slider over specialists or wonders, which is why I was asking if we were "cottaging up."

What the hell is "it?" A cottage?

On July 27 2010 14:37 Keilah wrote:
ugh, it's nice that you got the oracle i suppose, but if any great prophets are generated, it's bad for us overall. If one does pop, i think we should save him for a golden age later on, and make sure that the capital will never give birth to another great person. In case anyone gets the urge, please do NOT get a great scientist for an academy... unless it's to replace a great prophet I suppose.

In a culture win, you should be building only the wonders that produce great artists. We also want to save the forests as much as possible for the few wonders we DO want, as well as the big cathedrals. Remember that we want to be working cottages as much as humanly possible, so our main 3 cities won't be generating many hammers. (the GP farm getting food and artists, of course).

I posted this link earlier, but if people want to know how to do this, here it is again:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298093

On July 27 2010 14:39 Keilah wrote:
OMG, is that a library building in London? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO that is massive fail. That is a hammer city. It has no need of a library whatsoever. We get libraries in Victoria and York only.


Sorry for triple post ^^

Guys, if we're going for culture win, which it looks like we are, PLEASE read the page I linked to. We don't need another disorganized, unfocused fail game like the last one.

In the BC the capital will be pumping Settlers and Workers. It will probably build an early library and immediately hire 2 scientists for an Academy. A capital with Bureaucracy, Library and Academy accounts for half of the research your civ has to do all game long.

On July 27 2010 20:12 Lunaticman wrote:
I will be very intrested to see how this "GP farm" works. Also we stop researching after music? How will we compete with the other neighbours in coat of arms?

I mean they will steamroll us with their armies unless we can keep them happy, and how do we intend to do that if we don't have any tech to bargain with?

On July 27 2010 20:12 Lunaticman wrote:
I will be very intrested to see how this "GP farm" works. Also we stop researching after music? How will we compete with the other neighbours in coat of arms?

I mean they will steamroll us with their armies unless we can keep them happy, and how do we intend to do that if we don't have any tech to bargain with?

On July 27 2010 21:51 Qatol wrote:


The guide you linked to seems to indicate the exact opposite of what you are saying. Please clarify.

On July 27 2010 22:07 Keilah wrote:


See the word 'probably'. In our case, we will be getting plenty of research from our secondary cottage city, which also has gems, so we don't really need the academy. It's still not terrible and I wouldn't fuss if anyone did it, except... we're generating great prophet points. We really want the minimum of non-artist great people. So, if we got the scientist INSTEAD of the prophet, it'd be OK. But getting a scientist AS WELL as a prophet would, I think, be a mistake.

Even if we get lucky and birth a GS instead of a GP, the GP farm may not be up in time to prevent the oracle from spawning a useless Great Prophet, which would be suboptimal.

On July 27 2010 23:00 Keilah wrote:
Have you seen our land? We are going to beat the next closest AI to liberalism by three techs.

We aren't going to need to spend any time at all accumulating wealth. Trading all our happiness resources for gold per turn, and setting our hammer cities to producing wealth, will allow us to run at 100% culture.

On July 28 2010 01:33 Keilah wrote:
using 2 great people on tech gets us around 4k beakers, plus a free guaranteed ~4k beaker tech (in our epic game) but costs us 12k culture points in lost great artists, meaning an overall 4k loss. Us being able to manual tech and still win the race to liberalism means an 8k loss.

On July 28 2010 02:58 Qatol wrote:

It isn't possible to manual tech and win liberalism at higher difficulty levels. What you are proposing gives people bad habits. Also, bulbing Philosophy gets it faster, which lets you get GP points faster = more Great Artists = more culture. Bulbing up to Liberalism gets you Free Speech/ free tech (Printing Press?) faster, which also mitigates the culture point loss.

EDIT: Also, why are you saying 4K for Great Artists? Aren't they worth more than that if you settle them relatively early in the game?

+2 culture per specialist in all cities

+5 culture from all State Religion buildings

On July 28 2010 03:59 igotmyown wrote:
You can "accidentally" get legendary culture in 1-2 cities on emperor and below by hogging wonders. The old deity guide advocates academies in your cities if you can spare it, which makes sense since you'll be getting 8 culture per turn from them later on.

On July 28 2010 09:02 crate wrote:

I thought Academies were a special case that didn't double culture after 1000 years.

On July 30 2010 05:57 igotmyown wrote:

Hmmm, strange but true. And somehow, other GP buildings (shrines) don't.

On August 01 2010 05:18 DatTheMighty wrote:
Oh man i've been practicing a lot of civ 4 lately, i think i am ready to play with you guys next time this come around. i am like between prince and monarch now, i suck at waging war though, only good at space and culture victory =D anyways good luck guys.

On August 02 2010 03:31 crate wrote:
turning down Hannibal's demand for gems makes no sense (it likely doesn't even help him if you give in, since you obviously cancel it in 10 turns)

On August 02 2010 03:31 crate wrote:
I agree that turning down Hannibal's demand for gems makes no sense (it likely doesn't even help him if you give in, since you obviously cancel it in 10 turns), but I'm not sure that getting buddy-buddy with Wang Kon looks like a good move at this point. Notice that he's the worst enemy of 3 civs--trading with him a lot is a pretty big international diplomatic hit. If I were playing at this point I'd probably abandon the idea of keeping Wang as a trading partner and look toward getting good relations with someone else (Louis looks nice--same religion and sandwiches Wang in if you want to take him out).

But then I've never tried for a cultural victory so I dunno how this meshes with that plan.

On August 02 2010 16:10 Keilah wrote:
asdfsafsadfsadfsadf

Jesus, a barracks is going up in the culture city #2?

I'm out guys, I can only tolerate so much stupidity.

On August 02 2010 17:06 igotmyown wrote:


I'm going to have to call Keilah out on his continual rudeness, lack of respect for other people's opinions, and general immaturity.

Kudos to him/her for reaching emperor level play without in depth research into the findings and conclusions of the contributors of civfanatics. But I feel he too strongly believes in his/her own game experience, and tries to hard to impress them upon other people, even when they are wrong and inefficient.

I know it's pretty hard to argue on the internet, but it helps nobody when your debate tactics are primarily to shout louder than the opposition, and then to lash out when people are not following this quasi-consensus. I'm under the assumption these are fun/learning games, and if you don't commit a lot of time explaining why, you're just trying to make people do what you say.

I'm concluding he/she clearly want to/are better off just play(ing) the whole game yourself, so I have to ask, why bother participating in the succession format when you can shadow it to your satisfaction yourself?

On August 03 2010 22:33 Lunaticman wrote:
I still would like to know a good way of uploading the save file.

On August 09 2010 16:52 Lunaticman wrote:
I tried, uploading but I'm having difficulty with megaupload.

I'll give it another try then if I can't get it to work just skip my turns.