Civilization IV Miscellaneous Notes by R2 11-26-07 ========================================================================== ========================================================================== I'm really awful at Civilization IV, so this isn't a guide so much as a collection of miscellaneous notes, tips, and reminders. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Cities: For any city to reach maximum size, it must be able to generate 40 food. This will feed and sustain the twenty citizens needed to work every square around the city. Subtract two food from the total for every square of "workable" land taken by something unworkably useless, like desert without irrigation or tundra without hills or forest. That square won't need a citizen working it, so it doesn't count when figuring out how much food you'll need for a sustainable population. Cities are best "dedicated" to a particular purpose rather than being allowed to grow randomly. Every city will need to be happy and healthy enough to remain productive, so build Granaries, Aqueducts, Grocers, Theaters, and temples as needed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Production City This is a city that makes things, and makes them as quickly as possible. It is best built in an area with plains and hills, especially if there are mineable or quarried materials within the city radius, since those greatly boost production. Nearby food resources mean you'll have to build fewer farms to hit your 40 food minimum, freeing up more spaces for watermills, mines, and workshops. Building priorities are the Forge, Factory, and a power plant. Of course, you'll need to build Health-boosting buildings to keep your people productive with all the pollution from those. Production cities are also a good place to churn out your military units, so build Barracks and a Drydock, too. This is the perfect place to build the Ironworks. If you're training your military from cities like this, it's a great place to put up the Pentagon, Heroic Epic, West Point, or the Red Cross. In the early game I seem to have the most success treating my capitol city as a production city used to make lots of Settlers, Workers, and military units. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wealth City This is a city that makes as much money for your empire as possible. These should be built on grasslands and floodplains where there is enough food to sustain a full population without building a lot of farms or windmills. Every possible space around the city should have a Cottage on it, starting with the panels that give the most food and production. When those panels are worked and the Cottages grow, they'll end up as towns and make as much as seven gold each. If you found a religion, seriously consider making your Holy city a Wealth city. Next time you get a Great Prophet, you can build the religious shrine in that city to make a load of cash, especially if you start churning out Missionaries to convert any other nations you have an Open Borders agreement with. Priority buildings are Markets, Grocers, Banks, Airports, and Harbors. Since commerce also powers scientific production, Libraries, Monestaries, and Universities are the next priority. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Science City Here comes the science! The potential site for a Science city should have as much food as possible -- like a Wealth city, but with two or more resources nearby that generate lots of food. A pig pasture and boats for fish can singlehandedly make a population boom, especially on grasslands or near a floodplain. The reason is that a Science city is going to have lots of specialists, and will therefore need excess food to keep them alive (since specialists don't work in the fields). Once you build the buildings necessary to turn some citizens into Scientist specialists, do that. The Caste System civic lets you create unlimited Scientists, so it's beneficial here. Representation allows every specialist to generate additional research, so that's a great choice, too. As with the Wealth city, build lots of Cottages, since commerce fuels scientific research. Building priority is similar to the Wealth city, just the other way around: build Libraries, Monestaries, Observatories, Universities, and Labratories before the commerce-boosting buildings. Wonders to build in a Science city are the Great Library and prestigious Oxford University. Since this city will generate Great Scientists pretty regularly, the National Epic isn't a bad idea either. Scotland Yard and the Space Elevator can be built here without decreasing your chances of spawning Great Scientists. While they're not great to build inside Science cities themselves, if you have a lot of Science cities you should endeavor to build the Sistine Chapel (so that your specialists generate culture) and the Statue of Liberty (giving you an extra specialist at no additional cost). Your first Great Scientist should create an Academy here; the rest join the city as Super Specialists. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great Person farm I haven't quite figured out how this reliably works, but apparently these cities are hybrids of Production cities (to build lots of Wonders) and Science cities (to get lots of specialists) to encourage the birth of many Great People. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Leader Attributes Industrious: Build Wonders in half the time. Quite nice. Organized: Cuts down on those stifling city maintenance costs. Quite nice in the early game, and less useful but still a benefit in lategame. Financial: It doesn't sound great at first, but crippling maintenance costs are the biggest check against a growing empire. Furthermore, commerce fuels science, and the more money you have the more of a technological edge you get. Philosophical: Looks perfect if I can ever get Great Person Farm cities to work reliably. Spiritual: If you're willing to switch civics on the fly as your needs change (time to train new troops means Police State/Vassalage/Theocracy!), this prevents you from losing a lot of turns. If you wait until you have two or three civic categories to switch at a time, it's probably better to have another attribute. One big advantage is starting with Mysticism, meaning it's quite possible to be the first to Meditation or Polytheism to found the two most common and widespread religions in the average game of Civ 4. Aggressive: The value isn't having Combat 1 for free in and of itself. The value is that with a little more experience, you can get the powerful "specialist" promotions that have Combat 1 as a prerequisite: Shock, Pinch, and Cover. Expansive: Health isn't that hard to come by, so eh. Creative: Only particularly helpful in the early game, when you want to expand your borders as quickly as possible. Extraneous if you can manage to build Stonehenge. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Civics: Consider these combinations: Create Great People: Representation/Caste System/Mercentilism/Pacifism Mercantilism gives you a free specialist, and you can make as many more as you need with Caste System. These specialists will each contribute to creating Great People -- a rate doubled by Pacifism. Representation superpowers your scientific advancement by allowing each specialist to contribute extra research. Here Comes The Science: Representation/Mercantilism/Free Religion Similar to the above, but swapping Pacifism for Free Religion for the boost to research for each religion in a city. Needless to say, this is more effective if you can build missionaries to spread religions around. Caste System wouldn't hurt, either, as all those specialists create research via Representation. Troops Go Marching: Police State/Vassalage/Theocracy All your military units will have massive experience bonuses as soon as they're created. All the bonuses stack with Barracks, West Point, and the Pentagon, so if you happen to have all three and this civic combination, your troops will be ready for three promotions as soon as they're out of boot camp. If you need troops NOW, swap Vassalage for Nationhood and draft your military. Unlike in previous versions of Civilization, drafted units get the benefits of troop-training bonuses. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Government Civics Hereditary Rule: Move military units into a city with morale problems. Representation: If you've only got four or five cities, you can easily solve morale problems across your tiny empire. Supercharges Science cities and Great People farms. Police State: Combine with Vassalage and Theocracy when training a lot of new military units. Universal Suffrage: Don't switch into this as soon as you build the Pyramids. You don't have any towns and you don't have the money to rush production. Representation or Hereditary Rule are better. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Legal Civics Vassalage: Combine with Police State and Theocracy when training a lot of new military units. Bureaucracy: The high upkeep is outweighed by the massive commerce and production boosts in your capitol. Many players endeavor to slingshot their way into a free Civil Service tech by building the Oracle for this. Nationhood: Haven't really found an advantage to using this, although drafting can be used like Slavery to mollify angry citizens to a certain extent. Free Speech: Doubling culture output is always nice, and since there's no free and easy way to get this before 1000 AD like there is for Universal Suffrage, you're likely to have Towns to benefit, too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Labor Civics Slavery: Perfect for solving morale problems in the early game. If people are upset that they don't have the temples or luxuries they want and it's causing problems, rush production on something. You'll whip the malcontents to death first, and while the survivors will be angry for a while, you'll have killed more angry people than you create. And hey, free production of whatever it was you were building. It's win-win! Serfdom: If you don't automate your workers, they'll be done with many of your cities before you discover Feudalism. I've found Slavery generally preferable. Caste System: Perfect for Science cities and Great People farms. Emancipation: Increasing the growth of your Cottages boosts your commerce and makes Universal Suffrage and Free Speech worthwhile. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Economy Civics Mercantilism: Only worthwhile if you have no Open Borders agreements. Free Market: Pretty good, if you don't plan on getting State Property for a while. State Property: Without any of the downsides you expect from Communism from previous Civ games, State Property is about the best Economic Civic in the game. Versailles and the Forbidden Palace don't matter anymore, because there aren't any maintenance costs for having cities far from your capitol. This saves you LOADS of money. That Workshops and Watermills produce extra food is icing on the cake. Environmentalism: By the time you're this late in the game, health and morale probably aren't much of a problem anymore. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Religious Civics All the religious civics are pretty useless if you don't have a state religion and aren't willing to spread it around with Missionaries. Organized Religion: The one to keep for most of the game. Extra building speed for any reason is quite nice, and the ability to train Missionaries whenever you like means that all your cities can benefit. After you discover Scientific Theory, this is the only way to get Missionaries for religions you haven't already built a Monestary for. Theocracy: Combine with, yes, Police State and Vassalage when you're training your troops. Pacifism: It's either too damn expensive to support your military, or you have so few troops that you get bowled over by the first guy to wander into your territory. Skip it unless you're really driven to farm Great People. Free Religion: Hope you built lots of Monestaries, because now you want as many different religions in a city as possible. The more the better, especially for Science cities. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Terrain and Improvements: F is food, P is production, $ is commerce. So a terrain described as F2/P1 is worth two food and one production. Basic Production is the least you get with a given terrain/improvement combination. Maximum production is the most you'll get: a town with Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, and Printing Press; or a workshop with State Property, Guilds, and Chemistry. A Grassland, Plains, or Desert square gets an additional $1 regardless of improvement if it borders a river. Lumbermills near a river turn the $1 boost into a $2 boost. The only improvement that can be built without leveling a forest is the lumbermill. Building a cottage, farm, workshop, watermill, mine, or windmill on a forested square converts it to an unforested square as part of production. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- City: A city will always produce 2F/P1/$1. Cities do not get the +$1 commerce bonus for being placed on a river square; the health of the citizens in the city is increased by +2 instead. The founding of a city clears the forest or jungle from a square, so those don't matter. Units garrisoned in cities built on hills get the +25% defense bonus normally provided by defending on a hill, in addition to any other bonuses from manmade fortifications. A city on a plains hill is 2F/P2/$1. No other hill and no other terrain gives the extra production. If you have several squares of workable terrain and one flat panel of desert, tundra, or ice, put your city directly onto the square you couldn't have worked otherwise to turn it into a nice 2F/P1/$1, then improve and work the other squares around it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic Production Maximum Production Grassland: F2 with farm: F3 F4 with cottage: F2/$1 F2/P1/$7 with workshop: F1/P1 F2/P3 with watermill: F2/P1 F3/P2/$2 Grassland w/Forest: F2/P1 with lumbermill: F2/P2 F2/P2/$1 Grassland w/Hill: F1/P1 with mine: F1/P3 F1/P4 with windmill: F2/P1/$1 F2/P2/$2 with cottage: F1/P1/$1 F1/P2/$7 Grassland w/Forested Hill: F1/P2 with lumbermill: F1/P3 F1/P4/$1 If a hill has a forest on it and is next to a river, it's better to build a lumbermill than a mine. After you have the proper technology and civics, watermills are generally superior to other options available on flat land, unless you need lots of food from a farm. Use river squares accordingly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic Production Maximum Production Plains: F1/P1 with farm: F2/P1 F3/P1 with cottage: F1/P1/$1 F1/P2/$7 with workshop: P2 F1/P3/$2 with watermill: F1/P2 F1/P3/$1 Plains w/Forest: F1/P2 with lumbermill: F1/P3 F1/P4/$1 Plains w/Hill: P2 with mine: P4 P5 with windmill: F1/P2/$1 F1/P3/$2 with cottage: P2/$1 P3/$7 Plains w/Forested Hill: P3 with lumbermill: P4 P5/$1 Plains are great for production, not so hot for food. After you have enough farms to sustain a city, you can really blast off by building workshops. If you have to strain to feed your people, build windmills instead of mines on your hills. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Deserts cannot be worked unless they have fresh water from a river or oasis. Deserts near rivers are automatically floodplains, and the river gives everything there a $1 bonus not shown. Basic Production Maximum Production Desert w/Farm: F1 F2 Desert w/Hill: P1 with mine: P3 P4 with windmill: F1/P1/$1 F1/P2/$1 Desert w/Floodplain: F3 with farm: F4 F5 with cottage: F3/$1 F3/P1/$7 with workshop: F2/P1 F1/P3/$2 with watermill: F1/P2 F1/P3/$1 Desert w/Oasis: F3/$2 Deserts are nasty inhospitable places, so you'll want to avoid building cities near or in them if you can help it. But sometimes the desert holds resources or luxuries you need for your empire. Oases are sources of fresh water, allowing you to build farms in nearby Desert squares. As with Plains, you can squeeze a bit of food out of a Desert hill by building a windmill on it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tundra, like Desert, cannot be worked when bare. If there are forests near a bit of Tundra, leave the nearby squares unworked in hopes that the forest spreads onto the bare parts and gives you something worthwhile to do with them. Basic Production Maximum Production Tundra with watermill: P1/$1 F1/P2/$2 Tundra w/Forest: P1 with lumbermill: P2 P3/$1 Tundra w/Hill: P1 with mine: P3 P4 with windmill: F1/P1/$1 F1/P2/$2 Tundra w/Forested Hill: P2 with lumbermill: P3 P4/$1 Lumbermills on flat squares, windmills on hills, watermills near rivers. Not much choice, here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ice cannot be worked when bare and forests don't grow on it. And yet the game undoubtedly put the only Iron source on your side of the map on a hill in the middle of an ice field, so you've got to put a city out there to claim it. Basic Production Maximum Production Ice w/Hill: P1 with mine: P3 P4 with windmill: F1/P1/$1 F1/P2/$2 Might as well make it a windmill so your people don't starve. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coast tiles are F1/$2 and Ocean tiles are F1/$1. Build a Lighthouse in coastal cities and don't build cities one square away from the coast if you can help it -- that means they're close enough that they have to fish, but far enough that they can't build a Lighthouse for the food bonus. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Resources: Whenever you find a resource, build whatever improvement is needed to harvest that resource. It's just sensible. After you build the improvement needed to harvest a resource, connect the resource to your cities via the usual trade routes: Improving your citizen's diet (Corn, Rice, Wheat, Banana, Spice, Deer, Cow, Pig, Sheep, Clam, Crab, and Fish) add one healthy citizen to all your cities for each food item. Some buildings increase health further for the city they're built in: a Granary for grains, a Grocer for meat, a Harbor for seafood, and so on. Luxury items (Dye, Incense, Silk, Spices, Sugar, Fur, Ivory, Whales, Gems, Gold, and Silver) will make one citizen happy in each city. A supply of Ivory allows you to train War Elephants, too. Stone and Marble improve the speed at which your cities build some Wonders and other buildings. Other resources (Aluminum, Coal, Copper, Iron, Uranium, Horses) are intended for military or production use . You need horses for most mounted units, Copper for Spearmen, Iron for Swordsmen, Coal for railroads, and Uranium for nuclear weapons. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Additionally, resources will provide boosts to the food, production, and commerce of the squares they're on if they're within a city radius. Farmed Resources: Corn: +F2 Rice: +F1 Wheat: +F2 Plantation Resources: Banana: +F2 Dye: +$4 Incense: +$5 Silk: +$3 Spice: +F1/$2 Sugar: +F1/$1 Mined Resources: Aluminum: +P3/$1 Coal: +P3 Copper: +P3 Iron: +P3 Uranium: +$3 Gems: +P1/$5 Gold: +P1/$6 Silver: +P1/$4 Pastured Resources: Horse: +P2/$1 Cow: +F1/P2 Sheep: +F2/$1 Pig: +F3 Camp Resources: Deer: +F2 Fur: +$3 Ivory: +P1/$1 Quarried Resources: Marble: +P1/$2 Stone: +P2 Fished Resources: Clam: +F2 Crab: +F2 Fish: +F3 Misc: Whales: +P1/$2 (from Whaling Boats) Wine: +F1/$2 (from Wineries) Oil: +P2/$1 (from Wells or Offshore Platforms) These figures are straight out of the Civlopedia. They do not include the bonuses from the basic terrain, farm, or mine the resource is sitting on: a Grassland hill with an Iron mine is F2/P4; a Grassland plain with a Corn farm is F5. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Workers: Generally one Worker per city is sufficient in the early game and more than enough in the late game. Don't automate your workers. They build too many Farms and not enough Cottages. Plan what you need your city to do or to be, and manually instruct your workers to work to that goal. When they're done, move them to another city with unworked terrain, or put them to sleep in the city they're assigned to improve. Pay attention when the game announces you've found a new resource somewhere -- activate the worker assigned to the nearest city and have him build the necessary improvements. Replace previous improvements if necessary, as it often is when you discover useable Oil or Uranium. ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Legal Junk: This "guide", should you want to call it that, is copyright 2007 Richard Rouse. Not that I'll care or probably even notice if you steal it. Joke's on you, though, since I'm probably wrong about half the stuff listed here and omitting important stuff left and right.