A little guidance...

[mbuna120]

I'm curious about how to play out a particular game. I have a save from Warlords and would like some of you who are better than I to take a look at it. What would you do from here? I feel like spaceship is my only option at this point... I will say, I know that I have some really low production cities, but look at where my capital was founded, and see what cities I founded next and tell me what you would do differently, please. Also, is there anything I could do with my current cities to make them more focused? Should I be working different tiles? I would appreciate and take note of any and all responses, don't be shy about speaking up!

As a final warning, this is Warlords and it's also a big map... 11 civs including me I think. By the way, I didn't found hinduism, but I did promote it, and I have a defensive pact with Cyrus, Isabella, and the piggy-looking english guy. 3 defensive pacts! That's why I chose pacifism, which I've NEVER used before, because I figured that there aren't too many civs who will want to attack 4 civs at once, though I know some of you veterans would

Edit, ok, I couldn't upload it here, but here is the link...(it's on civfanatics)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread...ost4562544

The post there is titled: Savefile for post in Realmsbeyond.net forums

[Iustus]

You can place a direct link to the save here, like so: Mbuna120 1838 Warlords Save

So you do not have to make a post in a random forum there.

-Iustus

[Iustus]

Ok, just looking briefly at two cities, it seems you suffer from a common problem. For example, lets look at Athens:



Like many of your cities (Sparta too), this city is stagnant at a size much smaller than it could be. Worse, you have built quite a few improvements that are not being used, especially cottages which have never been worked. I count no less than seven cottages you have never worked. This will not do.

You definitely should always work a cottage over those coastal tiles.

You have 3 scientists, which is why you are stagnant, you should fire at least one, to grow your city.

I would recommend you keep the governors on in your cities, use the food/production/commerce buttons to help choose what to work, but do not click the tiles directly for a while, get used to the governors, they are quite often right, and that way you will not have to go back so often to check your cities.

In the case of Athens, you can work all those cottages if you fire all your scientists (in fact, that is what happens when you turn on the governor.) That may be the best course, or perhaps you should keep one scientist or two scientists and grow a bit slower. You almost definitely want to stop working the mine. Probably windmill over it.

If you look at Sparta:


Here you are stuck in size and cannot grow by changing which tiles you are working, and you have no specialists to fire. Here you just need to change what your workers build.

First thing, the corn is not irrigated! That is a big no-no. I would suggest farming over the town to the south of the corn. Then I would go ahead and farm over the grassland village to the west of the corn and that will let you irrigate the plains cottage to the west which should also be a farm. Then I would replace the plains cottage on the river with a watermill.

This will give you a nice hybrid town, with better production and able to work all its tiles.

Overall, I would suggest building fewer cottages. Count your food, if you do not have the food to work a cottage, then do not build it. Never build an improvement on a hill (not talking about roads here) unless you have the food to work it. When you do not have enough food for a mine, either decide to build a farm so you can work the mine, or build a windmill instead.

In production focused cities, you will be building more farms and mines. In commerce focused cities you will be building more cottages and windmills.

I also noticed you often build improvements outside the fat cross of any city. There is no point in this. Roads/railroads are fine, but mines that are not being worked will not pop resources, so there is no point in building a mine outside a fat cross (unless you plan on plopping a city later to use it, then go ahead).

One other thing I noticed, you can fit in a couple new cities on this isle:


Anywhere there is a food resource, you can usually support at least a half decent city. I would probably found ON the coal, but you could found on the plains isle instead.

Hope that helps

-Iustus

[Iustus]

Here are two more cities that are even more important to found:


These are right by your capital, so much wasted space!

You have a fish resource by Sparta that will never be usable, that is a shame, I hope you founded Sparta before you saw that fish.

The clams though you can use, and you should be sure to found some city to use them. You will have to farm over the green arrows, to irrigate those plains to the north. I would farm over the southern green arrows as well, as mentioned before. This will let you work a mine or two at red dot, and some at blue dot, the rest of the hills you will have to windmill. You can trade some of those hills back and forth from red and green dot so the food works out.

Red dot can also help you work some cottages for Athens until Athens is ready to work them.

It is a shame that there will still be some grassland tiles that are not used in any city, but I could not come up with a better configuration.

I would try to chop the forests before you settle the cities, so you do not waste the hammers, but at this stage it is probably not a huge deal.

-Iustus

[mbuna120]

Wow, that is a lot of useful information to think about at once 8) So, if I'm reading your pictures right, I have to have a *string* of farms in order to irrigate a farm not near a water supply? They have to be connected? Irrigation is something I haven't quite gotten the hang of yet.

keep the governors on in your cities, use the food/production/commerce buttons to help choose what to work

How soon in a cities life do you turn on the governor? I never turn them on at all, I really need to try it out. But do you build the city a little while before turning them on? Or just do it right out of the gate?

hope you founded Sparta before you saw that fish.

Yes, I did. I just didn't scout far enough before planting the city. I also am taking note of your dotmap. I seem to have a real problem with overlapping cities. I just can't usually bring myself to do it, lol. But I'm seeing more and more that it's not so bad? Also, as for the wasted space, I was trying to rush settlers to take land on my home continent, as I was desperately afraid that I would be blocked off in the southern tip of the continent early on. I claimed land and just never took the time to fill in the empty space... this is also becuase it would have overlapped some cities...

One other thing I noticed, you can fit in a couple new cities on this isle:

I took that city from a barb, like all but two cities on the other (not home cont) isles. I haven't had time to put more settlers there yet.... or just haven't done it I suppose is more accurate.

You can place a direct link to the save here, like so

How did you place that link? I tried to upload and it said that was an inappropriate file type?

Thank you so much for your reply. I know it must have taken a little while to assess and do the dotmapping and such. I really appreciate it. Sometimes when I play, I just feel like I'm being inefficient, but don't really know why. It's frustrating.

[Blake]

It's really hard to go seriously wrong with always using the governor and always using "maximize everything" - aka maximize food+production+commerce. If you want to create a specialist then use the force specialist thing (leave governor on and forced specialist are with the yellow borders).

What maximize everything does is eliminates great people points from the equation - the Governor no longer tries to find a way to assign specialists. As seen from Sparta, this is a Good Thing since poorly assigned specialist are a Bad Thing.

Maximize everything also has some other effects over default, like it tends to make grassland cottages more desirable than grassland forest. It's basically "Prioritize growth" (food, cottages etc) rather than default which is "prioritize weed smoking".

There are a few cases where maximize everything doesn't work, sometimes it helps to use maximize food alone, food+hammers, food+commerce, hammers+commerce but be very wary of not using maximize food.

NOT using the governor is nearly always a bad idea, at least in my experience, since then the "shadow governor" steps in, he's the guy responsible for assigning tile workers when the governor isn't active ( new workers from growth, when moved by hostile forces etc). The Shadow Governor will screw things up for you, you can't tell the city to always work some tile, or anything. So what you need to do is tweak the governor settings until he's doing what you want - then when the city grows, or workers get shoved around by hostile troops, the city will continue doing what you want.

Getting back to when the governor keeps screwing up... that's mainly when you REALLY want to maximize something, for the good of the empire at the expense of the city (for example starvation to complete a wonder faster), in that case you need to use manual assignment, unfortunately this means the city goes governor-less for a while.

What I often do is ctrl-click a city (to select all) and then turn off and back on the 3 maximize buttons and turn off then back on the governor this "pulses" the governor settings for the entire empire and ensures that the governor is active in all cities and has a growth priority. This ensures a city wont go for too long without the guidance of the governor.

And just to stress something important - in all cases I'm talking about the governor responsible for tile allocation, the governor to set city production is absolutely worthless and usually just trains useless garrisons and settlers.

[Atlas]

So, if I'm reading your pictures right, I have to have a *string* of farms in order to irrigate a farm not near a water supply? They have to be connected? Irrigation is something I haven't quite gotten the hang of yet. .

Yep that is how irrigation works, you must have a line/string of irrigated tiles to get the most out of farming. At Biology you can farm anywhere regardless of the line/string, but if you do not have the string instead of +2 food from irrigation at biology, it will only be +1. Without civil service you can't string irrigate at all.

How soon in a cities life do you turn on the governor? I never turn them on at all, I really need to try it out. But do you build the city a little while before turning them on? Or just do it right out of the gate?.

What I generally do is this, when I found a city I set the governor to maximize food, while building a granary (usually). Then later when I see the an unhealthy/unhappy face in that city I will adjust the governor to maximize everything (hammers, food, commerce) without complicating things too much, this is also normally a good time to that particular city. You want all of your cities as large as possible all the time, this is an area where the AI or "shadow governor" as Blake called it is very deficient, it will start running specialists before the city is maxed on size-this is extreme , since those specialist could still be run, if it just waited for the city to reach its max population.

RE: the cramming of cities into every nook, cranny, and tundra tile- think Nike-just do it! But wait for your science rate to be good 70% (or so) because these cities often take longer than a "core" city to get going due to lack of space, hammers, food- so they will not be contributing very much very quickly, but once build up they are useful. For example Fishing Villages (with few hammers but lots of sea) are particularly nice for drafting/whiping units out of (just make sure they have a granary)

[T-hawk]

It's really hard to go seriously wrong with always using the governor and always using "maximize everything" . . . What maximize everything does is eliminates great people points from the equation.

Well said. By default, the governor treats GPP production as equivalent or nearly so to economy. So the governor sees a specialist as producing 6 total production, which is often higher than the mundane terrain tiles available, so it ends up favoring specialists.

But the problem is that the true value of GPP swings wildly. First and most importantly, GPP have zero value until actually cashed out as a Great Person, which for many cities is never or at least far enough in the future that the discounted present value is virtually nil. On the other end of the spectrum, if you're planning to lightbulb Civil Service with your first leader, each GPP is literally worth ten beakers. Those are the extremes, and there's tons of other situational factors. For example, if you haven't founded any religion and don't care to lightbulb a religious tech, Great Prophet points are nearly worthless. The governor can't hope to account for any of these situations; really all it can do is throw enough GPP at the wall and hope that some profitably sticks.

[Swiss Pauli]

I feel like spaceship is my only option at this point...

The other guys have supplied excellent advice on the micro, so I'll jump in on the macro level. The above quote sums up your strategic problem: basically, you've never had a strategy as far as I can tell. An overall strategy is more or less the first thing to decide upon. From there you can make decisions to get you to your goal as efficently as possible. For Conquest/Domination then (early) production is vital, whereas for a space race you need to prioritize research.

Aside from strategy guides, a good place for tips are the reports of players like überfish, Sulla, T-Hawk, and co. They set out their objective (win type) and describe in some detail how they got there. After digesting these tips, you'll be posting about launching into space in 1862!

[mbuna120]

when you guys say "maximize everything" do you mean just commerce, hammers, and food? Or also the maximize gp and science buttons also?

basically, you've never had a strategy as far as I can tell

yes....yes... that about sums it up But I think coming up with the strategy can be really hard. I always randomize everything, so I can't come up with a strategy until I scout the land and discover at least a few of the mystery number of civs. And then, as in this case, there didn't seem to be anything outstanding for me to do...I just built and hoped. Most early things I tried to do, I was beaten to, as there were 10 other civs. I did manage the great library though. But production in my cities is horrible this game. Having looked at the save file, you were able to see what cities I founded when, right? How would you have done differently? What do you think your strategy would have been?