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

[naufragar]

When's the newbie-friendly guide to scouting?

Right after

Lesson Ten: Cottages




With the Pottery tech, your workers gain the ability to build tile improvements called Cottages. These give their tile +1 gold. After 10 turns, this increases to +2 gold. There are 4 levels of Cottage, so after a long time, your humble cottage can become a mighty town giving +4 gold. These are your economy seeds. Plant them well and let them grow. My current domestic objective is cottage as many tiles as I can.

Every riverside tile already has +1 gold, so my cottaged riverside grassland tile gives me 2food/2gold. I've got no other land tile in my entire empire that gives +2 gold. If you don't work cottages, you don't have an economy. Full stop.

Here's your rule of thumb: put a cottage on every single flat grassland tile in your empire and find ways to work them. Don't work them at the expense of any tiles with 4 or more food or 5 or more foodhammers, but otherwise, work them. It's so basic that most Civ4 players will forget that the game doesn't tell you that the vast majority of your tiles should be covered in cottages.

And here's a corollary to that rule of thumb: if the way you get an economy is by working a bunch of tiles with cottages, and if it takes food to grow population to work all those tiles, then the player with the most food will have the best economy. If you've seen me bitch about how my neighbors have better food, this is partly why. I can predict that if we play at equivalent levels, they will have better economies than me because they have more food --> more cottages.

[naufragar]

And by request,

Lesson Eleven: Scouting

This isn't your granddad's Sun Tzu:




The intelligence apparatus exists to serve policy makers. (Or at least it should, but that's a topic for another time. ) Our scouts ought to provide information with which to make decisions. Simple, right? So on turn 0 what kinds of decisions do we need to make? Domestic before foreign; life before death; journey before destination. We need to know where we can expand profitably. You can see from the above picture that we scouted a wide circle around our capital to dotmap our neighborhood.

Once our immediate area was scouted, we set off in search of our neighbors. Our policy considerations were: how defensive do we need to be? From where and when might conflict come? There are also some mechanical advantages: contact with neighbors who know advanced tech gets you a tiny boost when you research said tech, and later we can get foreign trade income from these neighbors. You can see that we started going southwest along the coast. We only had one scout. (More on this later.)

We met Superdeath and compiled a little mental dossier of what that meant for our civ. We then thought about what that meant for the map. One thing I forgot elected not to mention is that we know how many land tiles there are in this map. In my very first in game screenshot, I moused over my score in the lower right and came up with the total number of land points (which is tiles). There are 2678 land tiles on this map. Between 10 players, that comes out to ~268 tiles per player. Superdeath was, what? 18 tiles away? It made some rough sense that our next neighbor would be about 18 tiles away to our southeast. Therefore, I started sending my scout directly east to meet him. I assumed the distances were equal. All mental models require assumption.

This whole time I only had one scout. I could've built a second, but in the early game, hammers are scarce and you really should only be putting them into workers, settlers, and the barest amount of other things. (Remember how cranky I was that I had overbuilt warriors?) Well, I did have things to do with those warriors. For starters, I blocked off GT's scout so he couldn't step on any of my important tiles. Was this a risk? Who knows, but I'm a cautious guy. Then I started using one of these warriors to scout to the east. Because of the long distance to Superdeath and the assumed symmetry, I didn't think that east was especially dangerous.

Then, BANG! We see that GT's borders are only 7 tiles from ours. Now admittedly, capital-to-capital distance is still 14 tiles and he moved his starting settler on t0, so he could've been 16 or 17 tiles away from us originally. (Ask me how I know this later, or just tell the thread yourself. )

Our scouting took on a third objective after 1) future city sites and 2) neighbor locations. We are now trying to watch every angle for a hostile unit. I'll try to get a glimpse of his cities, but that is a lesser priority than preventing an attack. I'll talk about the rush threat in a future lesson.

[Tarkeel]

Then, BANG! We see that GT's borders are only 7 tiles from ours. Now admittedly, capital-to-capital distance is still 14 tiles and he moved his starting settler on t0, so he could've been 16 or 17 tiles away from us originally. (Ask me how I know this later, or just tell the thread yourself. )

Your homework for tomorrow is to explain exactly just how much information PBspy will leak about the state of the game.

[naufragar]

Easy. In a no-score game like this? Practically zero.

[naufragar]

Lesson Twelve: Granaries

Just like Civ4 doesn't tell you that most of your tiles need cottages and your government type should usually be Slavery, it also doesn't tell you that the single most important building in any city is the Granary. Unlocked at the Pottery technology, the Granary "stores 50% of food after growth." Take a look:


On t57 I just built a granary. There is 22/26 food in my "food box" for growth, and I make +6 food per turn, so next turn I'll grow. (By the way, each pop growth in Civ4 needs a bit more food than the previous, increasing by 2 each time.) After I grow, you'd expect 2 overflow food (from getting to 28/26 food in the food box).

But, lo and behold, magic extra food!


On t58, I now have 8/28 food in my food box! Where did the extra +6 food come from? Remember how I produce +6f per turn? The granary stored it, so it's like I had an entire extra turn of growth! 

But now the rubber meets the road: what was all that about 50% or whatever? Well, what the granary actually does, is open a second hidden food box with a storage capacity equal to 50% of what you need to grow (so 26 food last turn. 28 food this turn). It then dumps free food equal to your entire food-per-turn production into this hidden box until either the hidden box is full or you grow. I don't think I really need to say more than that. The granary gets you free food. Remember how I've been ranting about food? Remember how it's the single most important resource for societies both historical and video-gamey? Build the building that gets you free food.

[naufragar]

Intermediate Interlude: Granaries, Cottages, and Whip Math

In spoilers because of math. 

Granaries are crucial for growth. Cottages are crucial for your economy. Whipping in slavery is crucial to your production. Then all these three combine in interesting and perhaps uninituitive ways.

With every crack of the whip, you sacrifice population points for 30 hammers a head, reducing your overall production for an immediate burst. This conversion generates one point of unhappiness as a by-product. If your unhappiness points outnumber your happiness points, you lose the ability to work tiles equal to the difference. You don’t want to lose the ability to work tiles, so try not to let your unhappiness points outnumber the other kind.

Imagine an early game city at size 4. Let’s say it whips off 2 population to build something, producing 60 hammers from the combined 2 pop. To grow back to size 4 from size 2 requires 54 food. Let’s imagine we have a +6 food surplus, as we do at the capital. It would take us 9 turns to regrow, meaning that every 9 turns we produce 60 hammers. 6 hammers per turn basically.

Now let’s imagine that this city has a granary. Because of the extra, magic granary food, regrowing to size 4 from size 2 only requires 27 food. A +6f surplus gets us there in 5 turns. Then we whip for 60 hammers. 60hammers/5turns = 12 hammers per turn.

The uninituitive consequence of this is that, when building stuff, if you have to choose between working a heavy hammer tile versus a heavy food tile, with slavery and granaries, you ought to work the food tile. One 6food tile equals 12 hammers per turn, the equivalent of 3 or 4 mines.

Granary math also means that cottages are some of the best production tiles. Imagine you have a +6food tile, like Superdeath’s grassland pig. You obviously work that, but what should your second tile be? If your goal is whip from size 4-->2, regrow, and repeat for a constant 60 hammer burst, what should you grow onto?

Remember that with a granary (and some abstraction), it takes 27 food to go from size 2 to 4. If Citizen 1 works the +6food and Citizen 2 works a dry, dusty mine of the type you see in my capital above (for +4 hammers), then the city only has a +4 food surplus because the miners can’t feed themselves. We’re at +4food & +4hammers per turn. (For simplicity, let’s assume that citizens 3 & 4 are null.) We get our required 27 food in 7 turns and then whip, getting the big 60 hammers. We’ve also gotten 28 hammers from the mine by working it this whole time. 88 hammers in 7 turns. 12.5 hammers per turn.

If we had worked a grassland cottage, we would have been at +6food & +0 hammers. We would’ve gotten to 27 food in 5 turns. 60 hammers in 5 turns. 12 hammers per turn. If you’re a newish player thinking you have to choose between working economy tiles (cottages) versus production tiles (mines), reject the dichotomy. Work cottages. Pretty much never work tiles that don’t have food attached. “But, naufragar, why do you have that foodless mine then?” Well, those who can’t do…

One final caveat however. If you're whipping a city more than once every ten turns, the first unhappy point won’t clear before the next and they’ll start to stack. The thing is in Civ4, CtH or base BtS, the weird little building called the granary makes growing a breeze. And it makes regrowth fast. With a very few exceptions (all cities you don't want to whip at all), the limiting factor in whip recovery is happy, not food. A mining empire will recover faster than a whipping empire, because it's all about the unhappy incurred. Rusten still makes fun of me for the time I forgot this little mechanic. And since I want to always cite my sources and never plagiarize and let my readers know where I’m getting my stuff, here’s a great Civfanatics article.

[naufragar]

Obsessive players can spend way more time than is health on these graphs. Me, I'm just checking every turn to see if Superdeath gets a big power spike that might indicate a military build up.

Or GT:


Hmm. Big power jump. We don't panic yet. If we see another big jump in a turn or two, then we start to ask some hard questions.

For what it's worth, GT has a bit of a reputation as crazy aggressive, so we'll see how this shakes out.

Either Mjmd or Ginger (both playing in this game, so I can't ask) wrote a good bit about evaluating "who's having a breakdown?" Basically at some points in the game, your opponents will have their breakdown. At other points, it'll be you. Rusten and I have lots to gain from peace, so we don't need to throw a tantrum just yet. GT as Boudica (Aggressive leader) might have decided that it's time for his breakdown.

[naufragar]

We met ljubljana, winner of the post count war with 58 thread pages to our measly nine:


He's doing very well, tied with the Imperialistic player in city count. All I can say is, I'm glad GT has the Zulu on his other side.

Looking at this zoomed out view, I'm very scared of Mjmd's prospective monk economy. That's going to be the player to beat.

Here's your daily micro puzzle:


What tile do we work to build the library? The mine or the cottage? (Assume pop5 works a cottage.) I have no clue myself. Just pressing buttons.

If I get a free moment, I might try to work it out. Otherwise, feel free to show your work below.

[naufragar]

Start the clock.



The scary thing about the automatic Great People Points is that I'm getting a Great Person in 19 turns whether or not I have any idea what to use him for.

Lesson Thirteen: The Slider

Here's a picture of GT's newest city.


But that's just the first pic I grabbed. What I want you to see is the red box in the top left corner.

In my treasury, I have 70 gold and will gain +20 per turn. 0% of my income is going into research, symbolized by the beaker, and 0% of the income is going into espionage symbolized by the spy. I have "turned off" research.

But by a weird quirk of Civ4 mechanics, this is fine. I'm building up a bank of gold at +20 per turn. When I turn the research on, I will set the slider to 100% research, and all my gold will turn into beakers. Because no gold will be left over to pay maintenance costs, I'll lose some gold per turn (probably -13 per turn). So by banking up gold with 0% research, and then spending gold at 100% research, I'm still progressing my research.

Imagine if I make +10 gold per turn at 0% science and lose -10gpt at 100% science. You can equate alternating between 0% and 100% research to a steady 50%.

But why don't I just set my research slider to 50% or whatever number gives me science points while also covering my maintenance costs, preventing me from going bankrupt? A few very important reasons. First, at levels other than 0%, 50%, and 100%, you lose a beaker due to rounding. The horror!    More importantly, saving up a big stockpile of gold and then burning through it gives you flexibility. Imagine I'm saving up all this gold for Metal Casting, but suddenly an enemy army shows up and I need to research Archery. I've got the gold on hand. I would not have been able to swap if every coin I made trickled straight into Metal Casting.

The rule of thumb here is to keep your research slider binary: all or nothing.

[naufragar]

Mjmd has gone Stonehenge-->Oracle, presumably Monarchy, and will generate a couple Great Prophets for a shrine and a Theology bulb. It's what I did in PB69, but he's got a much better leader and civ for it, and much better land. (Assumed based on how he was first to 6 cities. I want to count his plains cows. ) He's going to be in a very strong position. I don't think he's anywhere near me, however.

Anyway, I need to append a note to our last lesson on the economy sliders.

Intermediate Interlude: Libraries

Libraries suck. They're wastes of resources, over-prioritized by people with a weak grasp civic priorities, and desperately trying to do too many things at once. And they aren't very good in Civ4 either. Zing!

I kid; I kid. But you should approach your first libraries in the game very carefully. Rusten and I are making a high-risk gamble for a couple Great People, so we've built our libraries. Each of them cost 90 hammers, which is almost a full settler each. (Actually, it's worse, because settlers can use food+hammer, not just hammers.) Instead of 2 libraries, we could've had 2-4 more settlers. What do libraries get us? The building reads +25% research. This applies to a city's production. Our capital, which is our wealthiest city, only makes 10 beakers per turn. With our 90 hammer library, we gain... 2 beakers per turn. That's terrible. A new city could easily provide that faster and then grow bigger. If you find yourself building a bunch of libraries before you've settled your land, you're going down the wrong path.

It's very unintuitive, but you'll improve your science output more by gaining additional tiles for planting cottages than by building a science building. I cringe every time I see that we as Imperialistic are not leading in city count. A huge part of this is due to the library detour. Let's hope the gambit works. If these were normal libraries, we wouldn't even be looking at them right now.


Lastly, a bit of a micro trick. Remember how I want you doing "binary research"? Saving gold with 0% research and the burning through the surplus at 100% research? This works nicely with library construction. We save gold at 0%, build our libraries, and then spend our surplus at 100% research boosted by our library bonus. If we were trickling research in before, we wouldn't get the full library multiplier.