Not that I know of. I realized things were screwy when I first got the rank of Caesar Augustus while playing on Chieftan level.
Apparently your final score is determined solely by population, land, techs, wonders and the early win bonus (which grows exponentially the earlier you win). You’d think they would factor in type/size of map, type of victory, difficulty level, etc., but no.
You can see discussion regarding the scoring here. One poster there reported a score of 69,000 for winning a tiny map on Chieftan.
That’s not right, is it? Everytime I’d try to cross a border (even accidentally), I get a warning pop-up that says moving across this border will cause war. Are you sure you want to do this?
What kind of units was he able to move across a closed border?
Okay, I didn’t watch you play, so I’m not sure the exact steps you’re taking. Ergo, my critique may be way off base. Having said that, my pointer:
Don’t go for lots of cities right away. Remember that most of your maintenance costs come from your number of cities. Every additional city brings a higher cost, and one which that new city can’t defer- your old cities have to be able to support it. My rule of thumb: if dropping a city makes your science rate drop to less than 80% to break-even in cash, then that’s your last city until your money situation gets better.
He’s not saying units moved across a closed border; he’s saying that units moved through his other units. Which is true, now- units from different empires can occupy the same space. That’s why having the choke point in a city radius is essential; no open borders means that the enemy units couldn’t even enter the radius.
Okay, back to Omni- you say he had 4 cities before you could build your 3rd settler?
I don’t remember exactly, but it was something like this.
Found city
Build Warrior
Start Barracks
Switch to Settler when Pop hits 3
Build Worker
Finish Barracks
Build Archer
Build Settler
A couple of factors that must have played a role is that I made perhaps 3 moves with my initial Settler to optimize my first city placement. This is a decision that always stresses me out. Second, I found Horses and Elephants in two locations apart, they were about 7 and 4 turns respectively of travel from Washington by those settlers and dictated where my 2nd and 3rd cities were placed. I can only assume that that travel and distance from the capitol played a big role in my slow early development. However, I knew that a battle would come sooner than later so I felt I needed those military resources.
This leads to a couple questions:
Where do you build your first city? Right where you start (excepting the middle of deserts and jungles of course)? Or do you move to find ideal resources? If you move, how far is too far?
Where do you build your second city? Adjacent to the capitol? At the best resource, even if it means an outpost?
How early is it OK to make a solely strategic city build?
How do you prioritize expansion vs. infrastucture vs. religious/cultural goals?
As John Corrado said, we haven’t seen Omniscient play so these comments may be inaccurate, but…
If you start building a Settler immediately upon placing your first city, it’ll generally take 30+ turns for the Settler to be produced, and the entire time your city will not grow as all food goes towards building the Settler. However, if you were to build a different unit, in those 30 turns your city may grow three or more times, and at that point, Settlers may only take 10 turns to produce.
Good critique, but I don’t think it hurt me here. I found 3 goodie huts which gave me a pile of money and a scout. Having that early cash buffer allowed me to research at 100% pretty much throughout that early expansion. Still, I probably FUBARed the tech choices and who knows how much research I was producing…thats another thing I don’t get yet, how is the research rate determined in the very early stages?
Mouse over each research choice and you’ll see the cost for each. Unlike previous games, each subsequent tech isn’t automatically more expensive than a previously researched one. (In Civilization 1, for example, Pottery led nowhere and often I’d ignore it until late game, by which point it could take more lightbulbs to get it than to research fusion!) I often take this into account when trading techs with another civ – are they giving me something that I could research myself in three turns, and asking for something that took me fifteen turns?
I’m guessing we simulposted, so you can probably see this from my last post, but I used the Sulla walkthrough’s guideline of wating until it gets to size 3 before going for a settler. I do try to walk that tightrope of city growth vs. expansion, though I still probably make mistakes.
Another semi-unrelated question. How much do you build up your militaries when at peace? At the Noble level you can usually count on not being attacked until 0 BC/AD at the earliest so I usually marginalize military, limiting unit production to 2 defenders per city max. Of course I tend to push this too far and get overrun when I realize I’m behind in technology and religion anyways.
Yeah, I know that you can see how long they take, but the question was more geared at what determines how long they take from one civ to another/one game to another. I know it must have something to do with the resources the initial city has and your leader choice, but without having built any improvements yet like Library or University, what dictates how long it takes me to get Polytheisim or Archery? A related question is how is cultural growth dictated in those first few turns too? In the game I just played my 2nd city (which was on a coast with a reasonable topography around it) basically produced no culture for a long time and didn’t expand it’s borders until it was too late.
It’s like the tiles show you how much gold, production, and food your city will generate at the outset, but what about research and culture?
That was a simulpost, and those are very valid questions, but my copy of The Movies just arrived and so Civ4 goes on the back burner until after I play about 50 hours of moviemakin’ magic this weekend. It’s the hap-hap-happiest time of the year!
Research is produced as a percentage of commerce. That gold you’re seeing on the tiles around a city? That’s actually “Commerce”. And that is divvied up between research, gold, and culture based upon how you set the percentages. Normally, you start with 100% science, so all of that commerce becomes beakers. Once you’ve stored enough beakers to pay for the tech, you get that tech. Go into your city overview and look in the upper-left corner; that should show the breakdown of how the commerce in a city is getting spent.
Now, culture can be produced as an effect of commerce, but that’s something you do in the late-game, not the early-game (in fact, I think you need to have researched Drama first). Most early-game culture comes from buildings. Obelisks (available with Mysticism) produce one culture a turn; libraries produce two a turn; temples one; theatres 3; etc.
That’s what makes Stonehenge such a great early Wonder- a free Obelisk in each city means a brand new city expands its borders in ten turns.
Okay, back to production and getting you to beat out the enemy.
A few suggestions:
Screw the Barracks. A single promotion won’t make a Warrior worth much more, and the time it takes to make a Barracks could be turned into making 3 or 4 Warriors, allowing you to actually send a defensive force out with or ahead of Settlers, making it less likely that Barbarians will steal them. Build Barracks in one of your other new cities, and have that city produce Archers or some other worthwhile unit for city defense.
Build your Worker much, much earlier. Working a tile can nearly double its output; a worked special tile is usually more than doubled. A 3-pop city with 3 improved tiles has the production of a 6-pop city with unimproved tiles.
My general city production queue:
Worker (yes, I build a worker first while a 1 pop and undefended. Hasn’t bit me in the ass yet, and I research techs to keep him employed while I’m building him.)
Warrior (or Archer if I’m lucky)
Warrior (or Archer if I’m lucky)
Warrior (if the time taken will get me another pop; otherwise, skip this)
Settler (and send one Warrior out to occupy the location of the next city)
Warrior/Archer (as possible)
Settler (again, sending the recent unit built out to the new location)
Stonehenge (usually only taking 9-11 turns, based on local production, availability of stone, etc.)
This has worked great for me as Romans (since I get Agriculture and Mining to start with), and pretty good as English and Russians (since I get one “improvement” tech); not sure it’d do well with, say, the Arabs (because I’d want to grab Polytheism and I don’t have any good worker techs). Again- know what your civ can do and plan for that.
Now, when I say “go for worker techs”, remember that your starting city will take a long while just to get to pop size 6. Know which 4-6 spaces around your city you actually want to work (those with food or production special resources, obviously; others as necessary) and only worry about the worker techs for those. My recent game as the English I spent most of the Early Age without Agriculture- I had enough flood plains that extra food wasn’t necessary. Obviously, once I had Alphabet, I traded for it.
I almost always build my first city on my initial starting position, unless there’s a really good one nearby. Giving settlers 2 movement in Civ IV was a really nice improvement, since you can adjust a little bit.
Unless there’s a pressing strategic concern (such as your chokepoint with the Romans) I will build my 2nd city at the best location reasonably close to my capital (remember, there are two costs associated with a new city: the number of cities you have, and how far your new city is from your capital).
It’s never too early. If I’m in a position where I can knock my nearest enemy’s leges out from under him by placing a city, I’ll generally do it as soon as I can… if you manage to cut him off from say iron, you’ll be able to take your time and destroy him at your leisure.
Usually when I choose which civilization to play I choose whether I’m going to go the direct warmonger route or try for peaceful expansion. Generally speaking, though, if I’m in a decent starting position I’ll emphasize infrastructure over expansion. Even when I’m playing “peaceful” I plan to destroy all other civilizations living on my continent. If you can get a good tech advantage over them, it doesn’t really matter if they have more cities as you’ll be able to capture them easily.
Location of first city, how many nearby opponents (and their personalities), location of resources.
As reading Sulla’s tutorial seems to have had an impression on you, I would recommend that you read his succession game with Sirian; it’s on the same level of quality. There are lots of game reports that you can look at to see how other players approach problems.
I just started a game and took a close look at the city screen and something I didn’t notice at first is that the Palace creates +8 commerce and +2 culture. Thats where the initial border expansion and early research comes from. Go figure.
One weird thing is that I’d never actually seen a flood plain in one of my games. It’s on the chart, but not on my maps. I have always played a temperate climate, so perhaps they are just awfully rare in that climate, I started this one with a tropical setting and sure enough it’s loaded with them.
I tried JC’s start and it has definitely given me a the best I’ve had yet. After getting Hinduism and the worker techs I needed, I b-lined for alphabet so I could trade techs. Sadly, while I was doing this one of my neighbours discovered Judaism and converted my other neighbour. I’m now sitting at -4 with both of them and one just ended open borders. Both refuse to trade techs. Time to gear up the war machine, which’ll be awkward since I don’t have archers or copper. Hatty (the one I’ll probably fight) has both. I’ve ivory though, so if I can last until construction I might roll over her.
Well, my first foray into Monarch was sufficiently humbling. I actually got off to a very good start… but I let myself get dragged off of What I Do Well and into too much of the midgame military struggle. I fell just a tiny bit behind at tech (stupid cheating high diff. level AI!), and all of a sudden I had riflemen destroying my knights. I was in an unrecoverable situation by about 1600 or so
Hopefully things change next time with more focus and maybe a less precarious starting position (middle of a continent with enemies on all sides).
Update from 1410: Hatty and I are in last place due to our war. Hatty’s metal-based soliders couldn’t keep up with my production of archers. With the help of an expensive ten-turn peace treaty, I managed to re-secure my ivory resource and rank out war elephants. They’ve managed to turn the tide in my favour, as I’ve conquered Hatty’s enclave. This is a critical location for my war effort, since the city (Alexandria) pinched my iron tile. In a few more decades, I’ll have iron supplied to all my cities. A few lessons I’ve learned from this game:
Don’t go to war if you can’t fight it. (That’s right. I started the war. :smack: )
I played Rome/Ceasar this time, standard stuff, Noble level and tropical climate.
I was placed on the south end of a resource rich continent. At the north end I share it with just one civ, America/Washington. We are at the extreme opposite ends of the football shaped continent and seperated bu a massive mountainous jungle. I’m not expecting much direct conflict. I altered my starting strategy away from military to culture development. You could say it went well. I’ve founded 3 religions (Judaism, Confucianism, and Christianity) first time I’ve ever done that, no idea if that was stupid or wise. Wasn’t entirely intentional, just happened in the course of jacking my culture up.
Built Stonehenge, got beat to the Pyramids by one turn. I’m in the midst of rapidly growing my empire. I lucked out and conquered a perfectly placed barbarian city. My cities are growing like weeds. Now the key is to start figuring out what the endgame will be. I can probably make this a peaceful game all the way through looking at the placements. I have all the resources I need to be a rich civ. Now, it seems I need to decide if I want a diplomatic win (tough since it’s 325 AD and I only have contact with one civ) or a space race.
Played another on Monarch this evening… this one went… significantly better, though not perfect. The big problem is that this time I picked an aggressive leader, went into the game planning to be a military player… and ended up on a resource-rich subcontinent absolutely perfect for playing pacifist culture hound. Over the course of the game I lost out on five or six wonders by 3 turns or less that I would have had if I was playing industrious instead… and I don’t think I built a single military unit after infantry.
I came up nine turns short of a culture victory when the top AI player sent up the space ship. The big problem is that none of the top three players (AI, me, AI) were fighting with each other, at all. The top AI was on the other continent, and the AI immediately below me was on the opposite side of my continent. The spaces between us were filled with civs that couldn’t stop fighting… and as they were no threat to us, they wouldn’t have been worth the resources to eliminate. So it was basically a race to see who could hit a victory condition first (the third place AI came within a hundred votes of a diplomatic victory, actually). The other thing that sort of killed me was that, because I wasn’t pushing for culture from the very start, I didn’t have my Great People determining structures set up perfectly… which ended up having me pushing for a culture victory and only seeing two Artists over the course of the game. Not helpful.
The middle of the game was key for me hanging in with the more-cheating-smarter-whatever AIs. The combination of financial, printing press, universal sufferage, and lots of towns moved me up from fifth place to second on the score rankings once they all got into place and kicked my empire into full on production/research.
Ahhhhh, this game is so addictive once you get over the performance issues Anyone have any word on potential upcoming patches yet?
Anyone have any word on potential upcoming patches yet?