# Some newbie tips for Civilization IV? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [May 19, 2010, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978 "2010-05-19T06:02:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f08c70/32.png) [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2010, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/21 "2010-05-19T19:58:02Z")
Argh, just got my ass handed to me while attempting to fight a war. How do I find out what units the enemy have other than mangaing all my spies/explorers/scouts? ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/22 "2010-05-19T21:08:24Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > I disagree: it’s important to remember that building either workers or settlers will halt your population growth until they’re complete. If you build a worker right from the get-go, your population will be stuck at 1 for 10-15 turns, which will cripple your first research item. I build a warrior right away, use my existing warrior to expore the periphery of my territory, and within a couple of turns when my second warrior is complete my population is already up to 3. _Then_ I build a worker and probably a settler too. > > Playing against the AIs, I can count on there being no threat from anything except animals for the first 20 turns or so, and so I try to take advantage of that time to ramp up my city’s productivity and found a second city. I play at the Prince level, BTW. It’s very important to NOT build workers or settlers until your population can support it. Building Warriors is a quick way to get your city growing, and of course they can be upgraded later. ---
**Author:** ![Chipacabra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@Chipacabra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chipacabra)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2010, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/23 "2010-05-19T22:00:04Z")
Actually, when you crunch out the math, most of the time a worker is your best first build, so long as you have enough things for him to do when he arrives. This means you need the worker techs to improve the stuff around your city. Farming a wheat space or flood plain, or pasturing some pigs will easily make up for the lost turns of growth making the worker. The extra hammers from mines will speed up your production, which will get your multiplier buildings up faster, which will make up for lost research. If you’re lucky enough to start with gold in your fat cross, mining it as soon as possible gives you a huge research boost. Of course, an even better starting situation is to have a coastal starting city with sea resources, and a civ that starts with fishing tech. It almost seems unfair how good that start is. ---
**Author:** ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/24 "2010-05-20T04:17:49Z")
> [@Chipacabra](#): > > Actually, when you crunch out the math, most of the time a worker is your best first build, so long as you have enough things for him to do when he arrives. This means you need the worker techs to improve the stuff around your city. Absolutely. Having more population isn’t worth much if you only have unimproved tiles to work. This is also why Bronze Working is a very important early technology: with slavery, you can convert the population working crap tiles into something useful (like another worker). ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/25 "2010-05-20T04:30:25Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > Absolutely. Having more population isn’t worth much if you only have unimproved tiles to work. I’m not convinced. IIRC floodplains have a starting food yield of 3, so within ten turns you can have two surplus food units by adding two population and having them work those tiles. If you build a worker (~10 turns) and then have him build a farm on a floodplain (~4 turns?) it’s taken you 14 turns to start reaping the same amount of surplus food. (as you probably only have one extra population at that point to work that one tile.) (An unworked floodplain tile 3 food units, and if you deduct two units consumed by the population working the tile, that leaves you one left over. Add a farm to that tile, and you’ve got 4 food units, yielding two surplus units.) If I’m situated close to a lot of flood plain tiles, I find I quickly grow to my maximum happy population without any farms at all. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/26 "2010-05-20T04:36:51Z")
As for advice for the OP: it’s really important to understand how population works the “fat cross” of your productive tiles. Being able to manually adjust production gives me a critical edge, especially when I’m racing to finish a world wonder or something. ---
**Author:** ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/27 "2010-05-20T04:59:57Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > I’m not convinced. IIRC floodplains have a starting food yield of 3, so within ten turns you can have two surplus food units by adding two population and having them work those tiles. If you build a worker (~10 turns) and then have him build a farm on a floodplain (~4 turns?) it’s taken you 14 turns to start reaping the same amount of surplus food. (as you probably only have one extra population at that point to work that one tile.) But you also have a worker, who can keep improving tiles (and chopping down forests to give you production boosts). With that worker, your productivity will be growing faster than without it, and you’ll soon catch up. But sure, flood plains are as good as unimproved non-resource tiles get, so of course having a lot of those will make working unimproved tiles a better idea than it otherwise is. Not that you should be building farms on your flood plains, that’s prime cottaging land! > [@Koxinga](#): > > If I’m situated close to a lot of flood plain tiles, I find I quickly grow to my maximum happy population without any farms at all. If you’re growing to the happy cap, wouldn’t you want a granary in there at some point? The main thing is that you’re going to have to build a worker using unimproved tiles at some point. Adding another unimproved tile to work will decrease the time it takes to build the worker, but not by as much time as it took to grow the population point to work that tile. Meanwhile you’re wasting turns your workers could be improving your land by not having any workers. ---
**Author:** ![Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f08c70/32.png) [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/28 "2010-05-20T06:09:06Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > As for advice for the OP: it’s really important to understand how population works the “fat cross” of your productive tiles. Being able to manually adjust production gives me a critical edge, especially when I’m racing to finish a world wonder or something. This is what got me; I mistook the cultural border of the city for tiles which it can control. Wasted many time on having my worker improving tiles which I have no access to. So I guess the idea for expansion is to build cities to cover as many of those tiles as possible under the fat cross’ ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/29 "2010-05-20T06:18:57Z")
I’m not sure I totally understand what you mean so please forgive me if I am off track. Each city has it’s own “fat cross” which its population can work. Ideally, you can mesh your cities sort of like a jigsaw puzzle so the fat cross for each city aligns with its neighbouring city. However, in reality that doesn’t occur all that often. There are normally vacant squares outside of the fat crosses of cities and usually overlapping of the fat crosses of each city. The overlapping normally only is an issue later in the game when your city has expanded to work all the squares- even then it may not be a problem if you remove some of the population to make them specialists. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/30 "2010-05-20T06:20:49Z")
> [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](#): > > This is what got me; I mistook the cultural border of the city for tiles which it can control. Wasted many time on having my worker improving tiles which I have no access to. > > So I guess the idea for expansion is to build cities to cover as many of those tiles as possible under the fat cross’ Well, you’ve still got access to them, it’s just that it won’t help your city’s output, growth or commerce. But it’s still worthwhile to improve tiles that have resources like iron; and sometimes you might want to build a chain of farms way across the plain in order to link up irrigation to another city’s farms. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/31 "2010-05-20T07:07:25Z")
One thing that you also may find a useful guide- you should have a minimum of one worker for every city. ---
**Author:** ![Chipacabra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@Chipacabra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chipacabra)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/32 "2010-05-20T07:25:56Z")
Just to throw a monkey wrench in your fat cross planning, it’s not actually always a bad thing if a few tiles overlap. So long as a tile is being worked, it doesn’t matter THAT much which city is doing it. Say you’ve got a farm that’s in the fat cross of two cities. You can have one city use the farm until it’s grown as big as you like it, then it can move that worker to a cottage or something. Meanwhile, the other city can use that food space to feed its mine workers. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/33 "2010-05-20T07:30:53Z")
I agree with Chipacabra above. Most cities don’t work all the cross- there can be mountains or other non productive tiles in the cross, so some overlap is not a uge proble. Wjat you may need to micro manage is that the specific city you want to work a tile is in fact working them- not the other city. ---
**Author:** ![sohvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sohvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sohvan)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/34 "2010-05-20T09:26:01Z")
I wouldn’t personally worry too much about building extremely specialized cities yet. If you’re only playing on the easiest setting, I’d first worry about building a good city of any kind before you start messing around with great person building cities and the like. That being said, it’s often a good idea to focus military unit production in one city. Preferably this city would have at least one good source of food, as well as some workable production tiles like hills. This could be your 2nd or 3rd city for example, and you’ll want to build a barracks there. Axemen make great units if you have a copper source available. Archers are another good early choice or your special unit if it’s an early one. Your first choice of research depends a lot on where you start and with which faction. If you have clams or fish nearby, getting fishing is a very good idea. If you have a lot of forest, getting bronze working to chop down trees for extra production is worth considering. Bronze Working also gives you the advantage of knowing where all the copper is. ---
**Author:** ![XanderCrews](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/ee59a6/32.png) [@XanderCrews](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XanderCrews)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/35 "2010-05-20T16:12:00Z")
I have a technical question. I bought the full Civ 4 off of Steam, do I need to install all three games to have access to all of the content? If I am playing Beyond the Sword do I still have the content from Warlords? ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2010, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/36 "2010-05-20T18:09:05Z")
IIRC, BtS contains everything in Warlords except for some custom scenarios. ---
**Author:** ![GoodOmens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@GoodOmens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GoodOmens)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2010, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/37 "2010-05-21T13:10:18Z")
Regarding fat cross overlap, I agree with Chipacabra that some overlap is not a bad thing. It can actually be a real benefit for particularly good tiles (a gold mine, an iron mine, a wheat field) if more than one city can use it because that helps ensure that it will be in constant use. If City A needs to work different tiles for a time, City B can work that tile and you’re still reaping the benefits. Also remember that, to have your cities not overlap, they need to be far apart, and that tends to increase their upkeep costs and makes it harder to defend. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2010, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/38 "2010-05-21T13:23:26Z")
> [@GoodOmens](#): > > Regarding fat cross overlap, I agree with Chipacabra that some overlap is not a bad thing. It can actually be a real benefit for particularly good tiles (a gold mine, an iron mine, a wheat field) if more than one city can use it because that helps ensure that it will be in constant use. If City A needs to work different tiles for a time, City B can work that tile and you’re still reaping the benefits. Now how do you do that? Whenever I have two cities overlapping, one of them gets a resource and that’s that – if I go to the city manager of the other city, that tile is shaded out just as it would be if it were outside the regular fat cross. I’d like to know how to manage that, because I often get one city on the brink of starvation, as it’s in the middle of a desert and there’s _one_ piece of arable land a few tiles away that it could theoretically be working – but it can’t, since another of my own cities has already “claimed” it. ---
**Author:** ![ColdPhoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@ColdPhoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ColdPhoenix)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/39 "2010-05-21T13:25:51Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Now how do you do that? Whenever I have two cities overlapping, one of them gets a resource and that’s that – if I go to the city manager of the other city, that tile is shaded out just as it would be if it were outside the regular fat cross. > > I’d like to know how to manage that, because I often get one city on the brink of starvation, as it’s in the middle of a desert and there’s _one_ piece of arable land a few tiles away that it could theoretically be working – but it can’t, since another of my own cities has already “claimed” it. Double-click on the shaded out tile in the city screen of the city that you want to use it. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2010, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978/40 "2010-05-21T13:42:45Z")
> [@ColdPhoenix](#): > > Double-click on the shaded out tile in the city screen of the city that you want to use it. :smack: So many malnourished citizens, for no reason at all. Thanks! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-newbie-tips-for-civilization-iv/539978.md?page=3)