civilization 4 Help

Man of Honour
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Yo,

I'm new to the game and I'm struggling to understand some of the fundementals.

In particular, when you double click a city, you have white circles that you can possition to gain resources... how do you increase the number of circles / men working near your city? My biggest city only had 2 circles, but a little one had about 5! Is it to do with the number of worker units near a city?

Also, I can't seem to upgrade my troops - is there any way of knowing what you need to build to access certain troops?

Thanks :)

It's a tad more complicated than tiberian sun :o
 
You increase the number of available tiles to buy by expanding the cities borders. You expand your borders by having lots of food surplus, so granaries and farms are your friend.


That is how I remember it anyway, been a while since i played it.
 
Expand borders by increasing Culture and then use the square in those borders by having more citizens I thought - but only playing Civ V atm so can't remember but that's usually how it works. 1 citizen per tile with a few bonuses from things chucked around I think.
 
Expanding the borders in Civ 4 was based on the culture output of cities wasn't it? build monuments etc

You get more people to deploy in the vicinity of your city as the population grows - build granaries, improve the tiles around the city (farms, roads etc) with workmen

You'll access better troops with researched techs, your troops can be improved somewhat through promotion(winning fights)
 
Yo,
....you have white circles that you can possition to gain resources... how do you increase the number of circles / men working near your city? My biggest city only had 2 circles, but a little one had about 5! Is it to do with the number of worker units near a city?

White circles = production shields?
If you position a city near a river/grasslands you might find that only one or two of the river/grass squares give a production shield. Iirc (been years) you might have some way of changing this later (much later) in the game with technology.

You can make a worker to mine hills that will balance production vs only having food production squares. Catch is that it takes a certain amount of production to make the worker in the first place.

Also, I can't seem to upgrade my troops - is there any way of knowing what you need to build to access certain troops?

You tend to start the civ games only being able to produce basic warrior units. You need to research techs + connect resources, like horses, to your city with a road to be able to build more advanced units.

Edit: wtf? My sig was pants, but it was smaller than the forum rule requirements :/
 
Thanks for the help so far.

I'm asking about how to increase the number of white circles / "production shields" rather than to expand the borders of cities. As far as I understand you only get resources from the tiles with the white circle around it in the city screen.

I don't understand why my smaller city was bringing in more resources than my larger one.
 
I don't understand why my smaller city was bringing in more resources than my larger one.

You haven't positioned one of your populace on a shield producing square. Unmined hills tend only to give 1. Forrests two. Other types of square might give 0.

A fairly noob error might be to mistakenly have citizens working as scientists early in the game (a miss click etc). Thus making a large city (ie pop 5 early in the game) seem not to be producing much food or shields.
 
You haven't positioned one of your populace on a shield producing square. Unmined hills tend only to give 1. Forrests two. Other types of square might give 0.

A fairly noob error might be to mistakenly have citizens working as scientists early in the game (a miss click etc). Thus making a large city (ie pop 5 early in the game) seem not to be producing much food or shields.

I will continue with the silly questions - how do you increase the number of your population / the amound of people you can place on squares?

Many thanks.
 
Excess food production.

Its a balance at the start of the game with your first city. Do you try to 'rush' food production to get to pop 2/3 quickly. Do you balance excess food production with shields to create a worker sooner. Again, do you try to go with shields to get a granary before making a 2nd settler (usually better to get 1 settler first before this iirc).
 
I will continue with the silly questions - how do you increase the number of your population / the amound of people you can place on squares?

Many thanks.

You can't, one citizen/pop will only work one square, but with technology you can use workers to build better things to increase the yeilds on the tile and some yeild increases will happen automatically on discovering a tech from what I remember.

Edit - Maybe I misread what you wrote.

Excess food will increase population of a city, so working flood plains or river grasslands give more food than the citizen working that square will eat, and with enough excess food, the pop will increase. When a pop increase occurs the excess food is set to zero and builds up again, Granaries are useful as they keep food, so when the pop increases the food isn't reset to zero.

It's been a while since I've played Civ IV so hope this is correct.
 
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Think it generally pays to build a granary quickly in a Civ games. It really depends on how you want to "win" do you want to be a military expansionist then you need to focus more on production of unit. I tend to just land grab and expand my population and sit on what I have and turn cities by having more culture than my neighbours.

Yer and get on Civ 5 then we can tell you more :-)
 
Thanks guys, I'll give it another go later.

Civ 5 is out of the question, Civ 4 made my laptop overhead and shutdown last night :D :o
 
Thanks guys, I'll give it another go later.

Civ 5 is out of the question, Civ 4 made my laptop overhead and shutdown last night :D :o

Ar, not so good then maybe drop down to Civ 3 :D

Once you mastered Civ then you can move onto the harder empire builders like Hearts of Iron and really get your brain scrambled!
 
I had another crack at this game last night. Did much better, but was still utterly nooby.

My main problem is finding out how to compromise balancing all the things you can progress with. It's easy to get a huge city by farming to the max, but this means little production and money - as soon as you take people off of the farms to compromise for this, starvation occurs. This means I find it very hard to develop military units.

Furthermore I'm failing to understand the point of building religious things - what is the benefit / main point of this? It only seems to allow you to build more religious things which lead to 'happiness' or more culture, but those aren't things I struggle with. Perhaps it becomes more important later on in the game?

Is it possible to share food / production between cities?

Finally, I noticed you can gain scientists within cities - how do these influence research rates?

Any advice / strategy / discussion welcome :)
 
Religion = easy culture and simple diplomacy but are not a priority on lower difficulty levels at the start (unless you found a religion).

As for balancing the cities the terrain you build them around usually dictates what you improve and how they become orientated, so build next to hills and every bit of flat land should be irrigated to help production, build next to lots of food resources and town it up every where to make money, build on dull green stuff and you need a mix (or to not build near it as much as your early cities need a bit of direction)

Specialists within a city provide bonuses to the cities output of what ever the specialist is for, so science from a scientist and so on. They help much later on with excess citizens or controlling growth as a specialist can not work a tile in the city.
 
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I haven't played Civ 4 for a bit, but generally the more cities you have the better. Also, it is a common tactic to build a city with a purpose - either for gold, production, or scientific research. Early in the game you don't want to build your cities too far from your capital as it costs more gold per turn to maintain them the further they are from your captial. Also, it is easier to defend your cities when they are nearer each other from those pesky barbarians!

If the race you choose doesn't start with a Scout, then it is a good idea to build one pretty quick so you can find the best place to build your next city when the time comes. You will also find small villages (I forget what they are called, but they are a gold colour) that will give you gold, sometimes map knowledge, or other valuable bonuses early on in the game.

You can make more money from trade routes between your cities. For this to happen they must be connected via road or river (and Sea later on but requires a particular Technology) - for river connection, both cities must be on a tile next to the same river. When you start the game, if there is a river nearby then it is a good idea to found your capital next to the river for this reason (not to mention that the yield of tiles is usually excellent in these areas anyway).

I vaguely remember always rushing to get a religion on the Technology tree as my first task (I forget which religions, but there are two they you get very early in the Technology tree) - the first player to gain the associated technology will get that religion. Religion helps you increase your culture points which periodically increase the borders of a city (every time your borders expand, you need more and more culture points). I believe religion also gives you more happiness (happy faces in the UI) whcih will be more or less important depending on your race, your civics, and the level of difficulty with which you play the game. But as your cities grow (have more population points - the white circles) happiness will become more of an issue as each population point gives you a negative happy face.

If you found a religion, then it will also spread to other cities. This is instantaneous (I think) for a city connected to your capital via road or river. Otherwise the religion will eventually spread (there is a unit that you can build that will spread your religion to your other cities too). I believe you get a reasonable amount of gold income from having more cities with your religion (you can even spread it to foreign cities if you can enter there borders).

You cannot share food or production between cities.

Scientists (specialists I think they are called generally) allow you more control over how your population points (white circles) are utilised. When you are able to use a specialist in a city then you will be taking away one of your white circles. In other words, White Circles + Specialists = Population points.

I'm a bit rusty on Research, but I'm pretty sure that a portion of your gold from a city determines the contribution that city makes to research? Also, as you say, specialists can also be used to increase research. If you are unsure how changing a population point in a city from a white circle (working a particular tile) to a specialist, then just look at the difference in that cities research contribution before and after you change the white circle to a specialist.


I'm a bit rusty with all this, but it's all coming back to me as I type :) Hopefully others can correct any errors i've made.
 
Strategy entirely depends on who your neighbours are. A few pointers:

If you start near a warmonger, peaceful expansion is not going to be an option (eg Monty, Gengis, Shaka, Napoleon, Cathy).

If you start near a peaceful techer, tech trading and peaceful expansion are going to help you a lot (Mansa Musa, Gandhi, Hatsy, Elizabeth).

If you start near a religious nut, stay in their state religion and don't waste time trying to convert them to a different one (Isabella, Saladin, Justinian). They will spam missionaries and spread their religion to your cities for free.
 
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