By that I mean ones that can give you a benefit and ones that you believe were an advantage and were mistaken.
I play at the “Noble” level.
For a long time I believed that if your population was angry at being too crowded, that building more cottages would solve the problem. It doesn’t.
If you found a religion, and have the Holy Building, every city that has that religion contributes to your income. Including foreign cities- it helps to spread that religion. Caravelles can carry a missionary so spread it far and wide.
But if you’re going for a cultural victory, don’t waste your missionaries on foreign cultures unless you’re sure you have enough. You really, really want that religious building that gives a 50% culture boost in your 3 cultural cities, and to do that you need at least 9 temples of each religion. Make sure you have those before sending your missionaries off (you only get a finite number of missionaries, you can’t make unlimited amounts.)
You get one angry person for each population you have in that city (Manhattan is no Mayberry), the game mechanic is necessary to keep you producing infrastructure buildings for larger cities that are found in the real world.
I always thought the spys ability to change the religion of an enemy civ was bullshit. And developing Anti-tank infantry before anyone gets tanks was silly.
Unless you are very lucky, or playing at one of the levels below, say, Prince, this is almost impossible, because while you are headed to Buddhism, someone else is sure to be headed to Hinduism, or vice versa, and they take less time than you to get there. :eek:
I used to think that using the whip on your population (slavery) was bad and would have some horrible penalty or something.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. With no real way to make your population happier early game you practically need to use the whip just to keep cities from rebelling and as a bonus it gets things done. A city in a good location with lots of food will have the population back in no time anyway, so you can whip 'em again.
Similar with mass deforestation. I was always afraid of the penalties the game mentions somewhere and would avoid chopping as long as possible. Bad move - chopping forests gets things done almost as fast as whipping the population. Sure you can get more bonus if you wait, but in my experience it’s usually better to chop 'em as soon as you can.
For bonus points, chop then whip and get wonders done centuries before the AI even thinks of starting it!
I try to keep 2 untouched forests around each city, in order to 1) get +1 city health 2) get the opportunity for the forest to expand, at which point, wheee ! One more chop !
If the city has floodplains in the fat cross, I’ll also leave enough forest to counteract the -health effect (IIRC each forest is +0,5, each floodplain is -0,4)
I also used to try and get every religion founded, in fact I immediately restarted if I didn’t get Hinduism AND Buddhism.
Then I realized, there’s not much point in it. Having one religion is a big plus, since it allows you to build temples, and declare a state religion which boosts happiness across the board.
More than that, however, is more harm than good :
you’ll have to work to spread the state religion should some other religion be the first to reach one of your cities. Instead of building priests to do that, you could have let the religion spread on its own and built a military unit or building. Yes, there is a civic that turns additional religions into happiness, but it’s a late tech and besides, that only makes you churn out even *more *priests to spread every religion to every city.
Even if you do get lots of holy cities, you’ll have to work extra hard to convert the whole wide world to your religions to make them profitable. Again, instead of building a priest who, even if his mission succeeds, will only net you +5 gold/turn, you could have built a unit to take the city instead, or a market to net you +5 gold/turn (numbers pulled out of my arse)
By teching up towards the religions, you necessarily forgo pursuing techs that would put you ahead in other fields, be it the culture path (and that sweet, sweet First to Philosophy free tech), the maritime path (New World ho !), the commercial path, or the military/industrial path. You can make up for it by trading techs later, but usually AIs won’t be willing to trade important military techs unless they’re already obsolete.
The real benefit of having religious monopoly then seemed to be a diplomatic one : close the borders, send missionaries of one religion to every civ out there, and when everyone shares your religion, everyone likes you more !
But everyone also likes each other more. So… you’re really not ahead. You just did a lot of work and neglected your own infrastructure to spread a religion with no upside.
Long story short, I don’t sweat much over religion anymore I usually try to get Judaism, because it’s on the same path as the Pyramids (great wonder) and Code of Laws (necessary for expansion), but if I miss it, no sweat, I’ll get Confucianism instead.
The real neat trick is to let an AI found a religion, let *it *do the heavy lifting work of converting everyone (thus weakening its economy/military), and *then *swoop in and snatch the holy city from under it. All upsides, no downsides. Except, y’know, war
@ badlyburnttoast: there are no penalties for having your people mad in Civ IV. They just don’t work for you. It’s not like Civ II where the whole city then does nothing. Indeed, letting a city grow with unhappy populace simply acts as a natural break on the population of the city, as they stop being able to work enough surrounding tiles in the BFC to produce an extra population point.
Of course, that shouldn’t stop you from whipping out units/settlers.
Oh, and the AI whips, too, I believe. That’s why you see every AI known to man heading for BW ASAP, and immediately revolting to slavery as their civic. They also are quite willing to chop out units as well. :eek:
I agree with Kobal about religion. To me, the key is figuring out early who you don’t want to be at war with unplanned, and making sure you and he/she have the same religion. Beyond that, you definitely want some different religions propagating out there, so that the AI nations will go to war with each other. Nothing like waiting for an AI nation to be in the midst of a war with a powerful AI, and then declaring war and swooping in to take the poorly defended remnant cities you want.
Still on the subject of religion, I remembered another neat trick :
there was a Let’sPlay on the Civ Fanatics forums where the player(s), playing Spain, beelined for Hinduism, then Buddhism and had the amazing luck of getting Masonry immediately after from a goody hut. At that point, he hadn’t founded a second city yet - so he opted to delay his settler until he had founded Judaism too. End result : three holy sites in one, capital city.
Now this, I will agree, is mightily impressive, because remember, religious income is tallied up before modificators such as markets, banks, wonders and civics. Unsuprisingly, as the game progressed that one city ended up generating ridonkulous amounts of moolah and science (it was a coastal city, too, so the income was further boosted by trade lines).
However, this is a very special case - for one thing, it wouldn’t have worked at all, had the three religions been founded in different cities (because of unique wonders). Additionally, without the uniquely lucky goody hut, sitting on just the one city until Judaism would have most likely borked his civilization on the long term, and he quite probably wouldn’t have been able to outrace an AI to Judaism with only one city’s worth of tech. And of course, only a select few civs get a shot at scoring one of the two early religions, nevermind both of them (you *have *to start with mysticism, otherwise forget it)
Bearing all those caveats in mind, if you *do *pull it off, you pretty much have it made
I find in the Noble level that I need as many religions as possible to generate enough money to keep pace with the AI.
Did someone mention they play at the Prince level? I admire you- I found the step up from Warlord to Noble to be dramatic.
I customise the game as well and get 6 continents and have 5 Civilizations so that there is always a spare continent to settle. When you try and circumnavigate the globe, the caravelle will carry an explorer so that you can drop the explorer off to find the goody huts well before you have Astronomy.
It’s my understanding that the bonuses of Temples and Monasteries are cumulative. The extra cumulative bonuses to science, culture, happiness and production is still well worth all the trouble of multiple religions.
You still need to feed the unhappy population, and they’re not doing anything productive for you while being unhappy. Instead of having 2 unhappy people, you could instead have a lower population and work more highly productive tiles like mined hills. Of course it’s possible to just starve out the extra population while still working your productive tiles, but you end up losing all your food surplus that way.
I believe you are wrong. Think of it this way: Suppose you have a city of 5 that is happy, because you have five happy faces to counter the five mad faces for being a city of 5. Then five tiles are being worked. Suppose this gives you a surplus of 3 food.
Now, you pop a sixth population point. A mad face gets added, no new happy faces result, so your city is in “revolt.” But in Civ IV, all this means is that you aren’t working a sixth tile. You are still working 5 tiles, and still getting all the apppropriate income and production and food from those tiles. So now, you have +1 food, meaning your growth rate to size 7 is much slower, but so what?
The net effect is that your city is producing like a size 5 city, but at least it can still grow until it runs out of food on the five tiles it’s working. And then, if you manage to complete a temple, or move in military units and switch to Hereditary Rule, your city is already at size 6, or even 7 if it gets that far, and will produce at that level immediately, rather than waiting while you ramp up the population.
The trick with whipping is to recognize a situation where, in order to gain something else strategically valuable for your civilization as a whole, you will have a lengthy period where your city/cities will be sitting at a maxed out population for the available food, and time the whipping out of units such that the effects of the whipping are gone, and the city back up to full size, just as you are able to remove the unhappiness that is acting as a limitation on growth.
If you go to Apolyton’s forum, and go to the Apolyton University sub-forum, you can find a scenario they created (AU-201 I believe it was called, or possibly it was AU-102) where the goal was to learn to whip effectively. Whipping effectively means knowing when to start, how often to do it, and when to stop.
AND when to go back and start doing it again later.
The whole point is that having a lower population lets you move workers from high food tiles to high production or commerce tiles, since the food going to unhappy people is just wasted. Think of it this way:
Suppose you have a city with a size of 7 that is currently working 2 grassland farms, has 2 unhappy faces, and is at 0 surplus food so the city is neither growing or shrinking.
You could instead have a city the size of 5, which means you now have 4 surplus food that you don’t need, because any new citizens would just be consuming 2 food each for no profit. You move those 2 grassland farm workers to mined hill tiles, and gain an extra 6 production at effectively no loss. That’s a huge gain in productivity early in the game.
I usually try to get Judaism, because it’s on the same path as the Pyramids (great wonder) and Code of Laws (necessary for expansion), but if I miss it, no sweat, I’ll get Confucianism instead.
