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

[Krill]

It also ignores UB effects on valuation.

Aren't we fun to be around on a Friday.

[naufragar]

Multiple wars, different players jockeying for first place, industrialized warfare on the horizon: lurkers sleep.

Naufragar tells people not to build grocers: everybody panics!

Just teasing. I'm grateful for the responses. Let me try to synthesize them.




Most can be boiled down to "what if" thought experiments.

What if

a man in the Industrial era

or

organized religion

or

war-weariness

or

UB effects

"Naufragar says not to build aqueducts, but I'm finding myself health-constrained and don't see another way to avoid starvation. Let me reevaluate his advice." This is exactly where we want to get a new player. Infrastructure and its rate of return will vary, so a player will have to be able to calculate that for themselves. That said, I suspect we experienced players save ourselves a lot of computational effort by sticking to guidelines for much of the time. I don't calculate the rate of return on a granary, e.g. I just build the sucker and save myself the math. Especially when new players can already have the notion that Civ4 is a micromanager's nightmare in which every little thing needs to be optimized to perfection, it's nice to remind people that in many (most?) situations, you can do fine painting by the numbers.

And even from turn to turn the evaluation may change. To take a current example, I think this is the city in which I want my eventual Ironworks:


Except, with all of my other cities producing banks and universities, nowhere else is producing troops. Plus the payback period is gigantic. However, if I ever unlock the Coal resource, the payback period of Ironworks shrinks, and maybe I reevaluate when to build it. [Pseudo-edit: Notice this city has a university. That's not because it's a good city for a university. It's because it could build one fast enough so I could get started on Oxford in the capital.]

Missinf barracks. And lighthouses.

This one's a bit different, though. Please don't make me think through lighthouse math. (I'm actually probably against lighthouses in many more cases than most people.      To newbies: build lighthouses.)

Barracks, however, aren't as easy to think about with the heuristic give above. You can sort of do a hammer analysis. If you think a city can get through 3 2-pop whip cycles before needing its units, then you have a budget of 180 hammers. If 50 of those go into a barracks, you're left with 130 for units which is north of 3 axes. If you don't build the barracks, you can get a tad bit more than 5 axes. 5 vanilla axes beat 3 Combat 1 axes ~60% of the time, so maybe the barracks was a bad idea?  But then if you're building Knights, the barracks is a smaller fraction of your total unit hammer budget, so it's easier to justify.    And barracks are better for Aggressive players not just for the discount but because promotion #2 is better than promotion #1. It's really, really difficult (for me) to quantify the barracks. (For what it's worth, this is a similar consideration vis a vis Walls.)

So you're absolutely right, Mig. I don't have a good rule of thumb. Everywhere that will build units wants a barracks, but even at turn 208 there are cities in my empire that don't have them because I was in immediate war mode versus GT or Superdeath and needed the units whipped ASAP and then after the war, the cities went back to their main role which was cottage developers. Fascinating problem.

Back in the non-theory land, in the actual game, Superdeath asked me for Open borders, throwing in a world map trade and 5 gold. A timer? I sent him back fish for fish and offered a map trade. No idea how that Superdeath-Scooter war is going to shape up. I mean, I know Scooter can't defend against SD. I don't know if Mjmd will let SD conquer all that land or if he'll vulture or what. Interesting.

Psuedo-edit 2: I realize I haven't talked at all about religious play, because I'm not making use of it in this game. Hmm. A gap.

[xist10]

Lighthouse math ?
Okay, this seems interesting and a rough calculation shows, they are not so good.
But food to prod (or commerce) calculations are difficult.

[Tarkeel]

This one's a bit different, though. Please don't make me think through lighthouse math. (I'm actually probably against lighthouses in many more cases than most people.      To newbies: build lighthouses.)

Spoilered because this is not newbie-friendly (Do as sensei says and build lighthouses)

The thing to remember is that without FIN or Colossus / Moai (or something similar) you don't really gain much by growing onto coastal tiles. Yes, they are food neutral, but the two commerce will often be lost to civic costs w/inflation in the later stages. As such coastal tiles are best considered hammer-banks for whipping and drafting, and might not be very profitable.

My rule of thumb is build the lighthouse if gets you a tile with more than 2 food. When I'm playing an ORGanized leader, I'll admit to building lighthouses in just about every coastal town though.

[naufragar]

For after the game, for Superdeath:


Brother, I cannot attack Mjmd. I have no desert highway, and that guy has railroads. If I succeed, I gain nothing but a dangling bit of empire easily sliced off by him or you. It's also not my job as last place player (among those not immediately dying) to march to the literal other side of the world to stop the leader.

I do acknowledge that I shouldn't have interfered in your conquest of Gavagai. Now accept my fish for fish and solve your own neighbor problems!

The especially sharp eyed among you might notice that I'm in anarchy. This turn Ginger popped a golden age and revolted to Mercantilism. This meant I was suddenly getting peanuts from foreign trade. My net gold savings per turn got chopped by 20%. I thought about opening borders to Superdeath, but then instead decided to embrace the future. So I'm currently enjoying a turn of anarchy.

[naufragar]

Has it been a whole week? Well, I trust that the other players are reporting the exciting stuff. Here in Moralia we're just trying to get all our banks built.

Superdeath has been sending me an open borders request about once per turn. I don't know why he's so insistent. I've sent him fish for fish offers, and this turn I just straight up gave him a fish. "I'm not going to attack you (in the next ten turns)! You can stop worrying about me; I just want to build my infrastructure!" I was trying to imagine some sneaky play Superdeath was trying to make to attack Mjmd through my culture, but I can't figure it out. For what it's worth, I absolutely would not let Superdeath attack Mjmd through my culture. My desert cities on the border live at Mjmd's sufferance. I don't need to give him more of a reason to snap them up.

I'm #4 in power globally, which means that Superdeath lost a ton of troops last turn. (I realize I haven't reported this at all. SD made peace with Scooter to defend him from Mjmd.)


I've said in the past that I admire Superdeath's fighting spirit. Fighting against machine guns being resupplied by railroad is a daunting proposition.

Ginger asked for a loan.


The interest on this is peanuts. So I refused and reoffered at a bit over 20%. Or I tried to. Civ4 doesn't allow deficit spending in the diplo window. Since Ginger was making 0 gold per turn, I couldn't request gold per turn. We'll see if he gets my renegotiation.

Might be a good time to talk about the global economy.



Let me quote myself from March:

This is a poor, poor map, meaning that gaining land is not very good. (Sidenote: One of these days, I'll play a game of Civilization in which growing your...Civilization is actually a good strategy.  ) Because land is crappy, you need a way to have an economy separate from the tiles.

Off-hand, these are Financial or Colossus coast, boosted intercontinental trade routes from islands, the monk economy, and Representation specialists (through Pyramids). So, unless a game is advertised as a suffer game, map makers should probably take into consideration what this does to balance. There isn't enough coast to make Financial or Colossus any better than OK. There are no nearby islands (right?!) for intercontinental trade. That leaves exactly two ways to have an economy on this map. Unfortunately these are both derived from exclusive wonders, so at most 3 players can get them. That means on this kind of suffer game map, only three players can have an economy.

Because the map was resource-poor (and my land especially terrible), normal development doesn't keep growing the economy. You can see my and Superdeath's flat lines. To the above list of economy-sources, I should have included shrines. Both Ginger and Mjmd have shrines. I'll also correct myself: never-obsoleting Colossus has been quite nice for Mjmd on this map.

The economic rockets of Ginger and Mjmd have been inevitable since the B.C. era. People without wonder-driven economies couldn't compete. But wait! What's up with Ljubljana's? Has he finally climbed out of his economic death spiral? He has double the cities of everyone else and they had been drafted down to nubs. He just completed Printing Press. Perhaps he's finally turned the corner and will grow into profitability.

Basically, Superdeath and I will never have a competitive economy this game. No matter what we do, we'll be horrifically behind in technology. This means that all we have is hope. We have to hope that some cataclysmic war breaks out that ravages the top players while somehow avoiding us. That's why it's interesting that Ljubljana has finally found his stride. I don't exactly know what to hope for. Do I want a strong Ginger that savages Ljubljana and challenges Mjmd? Do I want a Ljubljana strong enough to contain Ginger while weakening Mjmd? I know what I don't want. I don't want Ljubljana and Ginger to maintain distrustful parity while Mjmd goes on to eat Superdeath and me. This seems like a very difficult game to predict. My one job, the only thing I can do, is appear spiky enough that neither Mjmd nor Ljubljana think that it's profitable to eat me. After that, we just pray for chaos.

[naufragar]

Whew boy. Mjmd just founded Mining, Inc. I don't know where he got the engineer for that. His last two Great People were non-Engineers and his most recent GP was born like two turns ago. That's jaw-dropping.

For after the game:


Superdeath, I have no idea what this means. I looked high and low for a cluster of fur and ivory and couldn't find it.

[naufragar]

Hey, good thing we wrapped up our lessons. I've never made it this deep into the tech tree in multiplayer, so I'm out of experience to share.

This turn, we unlocked coal.


We have a civ and a half of land and our only coal is the one 5 tiles from GT's old capital. It doesn't look like anybody got screwed over, although Ginger and I came close. Luckily, I don't think I'll live long enough for oil or uranium to matter, so this should be all our strategic resources solved. (Assuming Ljubljana doesn't kill my only source of coal.)

Ginger is researching Astro, presumably because it's a prerequisite for Physics, although now that he's started, the Astro arms race is on. Superdeath researched Paper last turn and is now researching Optics. I wondered if he just wanted to scout me with caravels since I denied him open borders, but now, I've got to make sure he's planning no galleon shenanigans. Assuming Ljubljana doesn't kill my coal, I'm going to churn out a couple ironclads just in case.

[naufragar]

Hmm. This is concerning.


Superdeath finished Optics in a turn and is now researching Astronomy, which we can see thanks to espionage vision. He's doing this in lieu of Banking, Education, or Printing Press. Why, you might ask, is Superdeath forgoing all these crucial economic techs while researching towards ocean-faring ships despite there being little to no naval warfare on this map so far?

What an interesting question.


Attacking Ginger over the ocean makes no sense, and SD and Mjmd are back trading resources and opening their borders after the late unpleasantness. This leaves me holding the short straw. SD's power is significantly below mine. Is he just looking to hurt me? The trouble is that I don't want to detour off of Railroad to defend myself. Compass->Optics don't really do anything for me.

I can make ironclads and my Heroic Epic city also has a drydock, so depending on how hostile SD looks, I might make like Commodore Perry. If I can get enforced peace until I get my cities connected by railroads and machine guns in my coastal ones, I'll feel better.

By the by, Superdeath's gold savings rate is equivalent to mine, despite my banks and printing presses. His land has enabled him to grow beyond size 6, which is a feat I am incapable of.

[naufragar]

Ginger spent 3000 beakers on Military Science rather than Scientific Method and is now going to lose the Physics race to Mjmd, who will use the free Great Scientist to pop a golden age. I do not know why Ginger valued Military Science so highly. And after Ginger researches SciMeth, he'll obsolete all his monasteries, crippling his monk economy. I'd say that Ginger needs to get a-conquering, but I don't know if the payback period for conquest is fast enough. Very soon Mjmd will have nukes.

It could be that Ginger is just checked out, but I can't understand why. He is (or was) neck and neck with Mjmd and, barring him throwing the game away, the outcome was not at all clear. Morale issues?