Help RFS-81 learn Civ 4

[rho21]

Wow, that's a huge Great Wall Egypt has there.

[haphazard1]

Lots going on in this game, and good comments. I'll toss in a few thoughts:

- rho21 mentioned Egypt's Great Wall. Keep an eye out for announcements of wonders buillt, both for what they tell you about your neighbors' priorities and tech levels, but also because of the effects they can have on you. Barbs will no longer enter Egyptian territory, but those barbs do not disppear; they will tend to then look for other targets to invade and pillage. Being next door to Egypt, that likely means they will flow around Egypt's border and hit your territory. Keep a watch for that happening.

- As Mardoc said, keep an eye on your military power rating compared to your neighbors. Being weak tends to attract AI aggression. Your neighbors are not particularly warlike, so as long as relations stay decent you should be OK. But if you encounter one of the bloodthirsty crazies like Montezuma or Shaka, being weak will risk an attack.

- Your new cities are looking good, claiming territory and adding resources you previously lacked. The luxuries will help with your happy cap problems, as will Hereditary Rule. And the larger garrisons for HR will also boost your power rating and help deter attack.

- As you add cities, don't forget to keep building workers.

- Workers can team up to finish tile improvements sooner, when you have a critical resource to improve and hook up. Partially built improvements also remain, and can be finished later; this is especially helpful when you need to move workers around as they can use part of their movement moving and then can work on imrpoving a tile as long as they have at least a fraction of movement left. A common tactic is to move a worker one tile (in open land) and then have it partially build a road. Then the next turn it moves a tile, and partially builds a road again. You have to manually cancel the road-building action at the end of the turn, or the worker will continue doing that the following turn. But this lets you move a worker a longer distance (to a new city, for example) almost as fast as just ordering it to go there, while getting a road partially built along the way.

- Be aware that rivers stop movement along roads that cross them, until you get Construction tech for bridge building. So having the rivers in your territory is very useful, particularly being Financial, but they can complicate your movement (such as in response to barbs or invading AI) early on.

- Connecting along rivers can work even before you get Sailing tech, if the entire path is within your culture. (Dark Savant mentioned this already, but it is worth repeating.) Since you are Creative, this is fairly useful. For non-creative leaders who need to use more difficult means to pop borders, it tends to be less helpful.

- Settling a city next to a river provides fresh water to the city, boosting health. This is not a huge thing, since the health cap is soft, but it is useful. Also, if the game goes on long enough, cities next to rivers get some later game options such as building levees and hydro power plants, that dry cities do not. Since you are playing as the Dutch, this is particularly important because the Dutch unique building (the Dike) is an improved version of the levee and is actually pretty useful.

Since those things do not impact play until late in the game it is generally not worth placing a city on a river if it would be weaker than placing it off the river; the growth cascade aspect of Civ makes the stronger city now worth more. But if you have roughly equal options, on the river is better. Especailly for the Dutch.

- The Dutch Dike also helps ciies on the coast. Again, it won't come into play for a long long time. But Dutch coastal cities can get an awesome late game boost, so they can be worth founding if they can get any decent food or territory at all to work with.

- Hmmm, what else? Oh yeah, libraries. I agree with Mardoc that you may have built them a bit early; those hammers could have gone into another settler, or workers, or units. Since you are creative, their culture is not as important as they would be for another leader. Still, they are useful so this is not a big deal. Particularly the library in your capital is probably worth it, as the capital tends to produce most of your research for quite some way into the game. Libraries in other cities are likely to take longer to pay off.

Edit: Oops, just remembered that you are creative, so the libraries got doubled production. This makes them pay off much faster, so building them is likely a very good idea.

Good luck! I hope you are enjoying Civ IV as much as we are enjoying commenting abiout it.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'd have gone with Mardoc's suggestion of the plains hill one tile north of the silk as your third city, for the simple fact that it's a much better city.  Early on you can farm the flood plains and grass and mine hills. Chop out a barracks and granary and you've got yourself an early game military pump.  Then in the mid game you can repurpose it two ways, either cottage the floodplains and use the city as a slowish growing hybrid production/financial sector or leave the flatland farmed, windmill everything bar the coppor and go with the National Epic/Globe combo for a Great Person pump and draft camp (when you get nationalism).

Your Rotterdam is IMO junk.  It has no food (not even river for chain irrigation to third ring borders), weak resources, ice furs are useless, only good if you've no happy and you'll be opening up monarchy soon which (with warrior spam, negated by hunting) will give lots of happy. The wine only feeds itself and finally the city is very exposed with no defensive terrain and far from your production sites.  Against an aggressive civ that city is a war declaration waiting to happen.

[RFS-81]

What are your suggestions for building Barracks? Should I build them before seriously starting to build units, or should I try to catch up in the power ranking first?

[Zalson]

What are your suggestions for building Barracks? Should I build them before seriously starting to build units, or should I try to catch up in the power ranking first?

Barracks add to power FYI. Population and tech also increased power (specific techs, mind you, such as math or construction).

To answer your specific question: if you are just trying to get some military police units that will just provide happiness, then, yeah, don't build barracks. You are spending hammers to get happiness.

But if these units you're creating are to attack or defend with, you will want the barracks (which you should plan on doing in general with units).

Not every city needs a barracks -- only the cities that you are going to get units out of. It's usually better to sacrifice one city on building units (thus building a barracks) than to try to have your entire empire contribute. The entire empire can add units when you are preparing for war -- or once it's done with infrastructure and you don't need other units.

Of course, this needs the Civ caveat: it depends.

[haphazard1]

I agree with Zalson: it depends. I generally try to build barracks in any city that I intend to produce more than a handful of units. Obviously plans change and sometimes I end up not building those units, making the hammers invested in the barracks a waste. When that happens, I try to console myself with the fact that a barracks adds a little bit to my power rating so it wasn't a total waste, but that is just me rationalizing my bad choices.

If I am making serious preparations for war, then I generally build barracks to improve the effectiveness and survivability of my units. But if I am just building the occasional unit for scouting, barb fighting, or happiness garrisons I usually skip the barracks; another unit is a better use of the hammers. For all out war build up mode, it can also be worth it to consider changing your civics to get additional XP for your army. Two promotion units are significantly more effective.

Stables are similar to barracks: am I going to be building a lot of mounted units from this city? Can I get a second (or third) promotion on them if I build the stables?

[Brian Shanahan]

What are your suggestions for building Barracks? Should I build them before seriously starting to build units, or should I try to catch up in the power ranking first?

If you've a dedicated military pump or two, build the barracks(edit: but only in the pumps) If you're popping a unit from time to time from everywhere don't. A barracks is good if you're constantly building units, not so much if you're going economic.

[v8mark]

Two promotion units are significantly more effective.

This is worth emphasizing, I think. Two promotions is where you can begin to specialize... Shock Axes give an extra 25% vs melee, which you'll be benefiting from most of the time (there's some maths weirdness with the way that works, but best not to go into that...!)

The second promotion also allows medics and woodsmen that can skip through forests at double speed.

[Mardoc]

For barracks, here's my reasoning:
It costs 50 hammers.  A unit with a promotion is worth maybe 20% more than a unit without one (guesstimate, there's probably no way to quantify this rigorously, it depends too much on your assumptions on the conditions of the battles you'll fight).

Therefore, the breakeven point is about 300 hammers or more worth of military from a single city.  You can have either 250 hammers of units with promotions, or 300 hammers of units, approximately equal value.  If you're going to keep building military after the 300 hammer mark, then the barracks is worthwhile.  If the city is going to spend most of its focus on economic buildings, only building military in emergencies, then the barracks isn't worth building.

This is also why people like to set up dedicated military production cities. 300+ hammers diverted from infrastructure will put a serious dent in the infrastructure of a city. But if you set up a city with barracks and Heroic Epic and stables and etc, and have it focus on military production, you'll spend fewer total hammers on the same military for your empire, allowing other cities to produce more infrastructure than if you tried to make all cities do all things.

Of course, if you ask ten people on their opinion of my math, you'll get fifteen different opinions - particularly the assumption about value of a generic promotion.  But also 2nd order effects, like unit maintenance expenses, Power rating, war weariness.  So the actual breakeven point is fuzzy and uncertain and dependent on circumstances, but that's still a useful framework to approach the question.

I do think promotions tend to be more valuable in MP than in SP, especially the ones that let you do something unexpected (woodsman II, commando, amphibious, morale).  It's just that you have to remember that numbers matter a lot too.

[haphazard1]

I agree with v8mark and Mardoc overall. My general rule of thumb for barracks is to build one if I expect that city to build at least half a dozen units; not quite as precise but not far off from the 300 hammers worth mentioned. This varies a bit depending on the era, since later units are more expensive to build but your available production multipliers also go up.

The point about unit specialization is a good one; the second promotion is usually a lot more important than the first, as the more interesting options like medic and enhanced movement and anti-unit-type have prerequisites.

The point about city specialization is also a good one, and applies to many things not just barracks. Having an idea of what you want a city to focus on and sticking to that makes a big difference, as you save tons of hammers not spent on things that get little use. You can have every city do a bit of everything, up through maybe Monarch difficulty, but specialization really helps.