[PB75] Newbfragar and Rusty's Beginner's Guide to Civ4

[naufragar]

But what if I have a fish at my capital?

If you notice somewhere that I’ve painted with a broad brush, then you are already too advanced for this guide.

Worker first. Always.

[Thoth]

But what if I have a fish at my capital?

Worker first is still better in almost all cases.

[Tarkeel]

But what if I have a fish at my capital?

Worker first is still better in almost all cases.

As Nauf said, that's approaching the outside of this "guide". But to paint it broadly; workboat first is usually best if you have a 3f1h tile to work, and the workboat will improve a 5f tile (ie. fish or lake).

[naufragar]

This is not a land of milk and honey. Have a scouting update:


We're moving our scout in a circle around our capital to look for potential colony sites. There have not been many good ones. This land is full of plains cows, which are pretty weak. (So I guess it is a land of milk, at least.) If everybody's land is equally weak, so be it, although it does hurt our Imperialistic trait a bit: not much point spamming out cheap settlers for crappy land. The river, however, is very nice. (Rivers in Civ4 provide extra commerce as people trade along them.)

[Amicalola]

I was being facetious. I think Nauf at least picked up on it.

[Tarkeel]

This land is full of plains cows, which are pretty weak.

To be fair, plains cows are pretty strong sites with 6 foodhammers, but they aren't as immediately good as if all those were food (like a wet corn). It's still a tile you want to work forever though.

[Rusten]

This land is full of plains cows, which are pretty weak.

To be fair, plains cows are pretty strong sites with 6 foodhammers, but they aren't as immediately good as if all those were food (like a wet corn). It's still a tile you want to work forever though.

Initially I just figured it would be a map without much food, but after that comment I'm officially worried about map imbalance.

I just pray that the balance team doesn't consider it a food special, because for a newly settled city even a dry rice can outperform it.

[naufragar]

I was being facetious. I think Nauf at least picked up on it.

(And I was riffing on the fact that I myself have gone workboat first in two Spain games. )

This land is full of plains cows, which are pretty weak.

To be fair, plains cows are pretty strong sites with 6 foodhammers, but they aren't as immediately good as if all those were food (like a wet corn). It's still a tile you want to work forever though.

Nah, plains cows (and all 3f tiles, like our sheep) are always weaker than a strong food tile.

Danger! Advanced civ math ahead! Don’t read until at least after the whipping mechanics sections if you’re easily intimidated! Edit: Ninja'd by Rusten! Tldr: 4food beats 3food.

A plains cow is 3food/3hammers, abbreviated to 6 foodhammers, but compare that against any 6 food/0 hammer tile. The first weakness that persists throughout the city’s life is that it grows slower. This is a GNP penalty as the 6 food tile will enable you to work more cottage turns forever. This starts off bad in the beginning and only gets worse as city sizes grow and it needs more food to gain the next pop point and cottages generate more commerce. The plains cow never gains on this, so whatever benefits it has, they have to be weighed against the loss of income.

But there are no benefits! In civ4, players convert food into hammers very efficiently due to slavery and granaries, which I promise I’ll get around to explaining when we get there. A 2-pop whip produces 60 hammers. Imagine we grow from size 4 to size 6 and then two whip. A city with a granary needs 58 food minus 27 from the granary for 31 food for two pop points. A 6f tiles does this in 5 turns roughly. A 3f tile does this in 10 turns roughly, but during those 10 turns it was also gaining +3hammers for a total of 30h. So the 6f resource gives you 60/5= 12 hammers per turn, while the 3f/3h tile gives you 90/10=9 hammers per turn. This scales with larger city sizes. A size 8 city needs 74 food minus 35f from granary to grow (39food). Let’s say the 6f tile needs 7 turns to grow while the plains cow needs 13 turns. Using our math from above, the 6f tile produces 8.5 hammers per turn and the cow gives 7.6h. (And that’s using a larger city size which makes whipping progressively less efficient and rounding in favor of the cow.) And to reiterate: this entire time the 6f tile is giving more commerce in addition to its greater hammers.

The math is similar when comparing a 3f/3h tile to a 5food/0hammer tile. Growing and whipping at sizes 4 to 6 with a 5f tile gives 10h per turn compared to the cow’s 9. Growing and whipping a size 10 city finally gives the cow the advantage if I round in favor of the cow. Then the 5f tile produces 7.5 hammers per turn compared to the cow’s 7.6. So at size 10, the 5f tile and the cow are equivalent hammer tiles, minus the cow's built in commerce disadvantage.

(And for those of you wondering about sustaining this with happiness, all you have to do is swap to a mine while happiness cools off and you’re already keeping pace with the cow’s hammers while having gotten many more and faster from the whip.)

But even after all this, we haven’t touched on the real reason cows and these sorts of tiles are so much weaker than their grain equivalents: speed. If we imagine a game that stretches on infinitely with cities growing to infinite sizes, sure, cows and grains might start approaching equivalent utility (although even this I doubt). But we aren’t in that game. By enabling an earlier whip and more quickly available hammers, the strong food tile gets settlers built sooner, armies built sooner. This is one of those “snowball” advantages. The 6f or even 5f player produces more cities, more workers, more soldiers on a relevant time frame and that’s why that player ends up beating the plains cow player. Presumably this map has given everybody equivalently weak tiles, but if our “6foodhammer” tiles are cows while other players have 6foodhammer-but-really-just-food tiles, we are doomed. Even if they have 5f, we’re dead. Plains cows, kids, not even once.

P.S. On Rusten’s reminder, I’ll just leave as an exercise for the reader: grass sheep is way better than plains cows. Can you use the math above to show how much better?

[Tarkeel]

I just pray that the balance team doesn't consider it a food special, because for a newly settled city even a dry rice can outperform it.

Nah, I don't consider a 3f tile to be a food-tile for balance reasons, but some cities will need to work 3f tiles to grow. Just saying that it's a nice tile to work. Would I work a plainscow over a dry rice? Probably, but the correct answer is most likely "why not work both?"

[Commodore]

I don't whip *off* plains cows in any circumstance I can think of, at least.

Plains cows: The best tile imaginable.