First off, turn off all the tips, hints, and any other meddling the game tries to do. Also don't let it auto-build anything nor auto-clear any forests. The AI is a moron. Like most AIs, it is far more interested in just "doing something" for the sake of it, than in having any "thought" into what it's doing (or telling you to do). AIs hate to be idle more than anything else. Unfortunately, they would rather have you LOSE than just do nothing, too.
Here's my building formula: If the ground is (green) grass, it gets a farm. Grass gives an extra food or 2, so always farm it.
Put cottages on junky land that won't grow anything well, and doesn't give enough hammers to bother mining.
Plains can get anything, so what I build there depends on what that city will do best with. If it's low on materials, put a mine...if it's not growing fast enough, put a farm...if it's too broke, put a cottage.
If you've got a forest, leave it there. Eventually you can put lumbermills and get some hammers, plus you get more hammers once you can put the railroads in. DON'T cut down any forests unless you have nowhere to put farms, because the forests also give a health bonus, and that's important once your cities get big. Better to have forests and no cottages in the occasional city, assuming you've got enough money-producing cities elsewhere to cover the costs.
Civ IV is pretty formulaic once you get the hang of it. But the main thing to remember is that the AI will always mess things up!
On the good side, the AIs obsession with "doing something"--anything rather than remaining idle--will usually mess up its own cities and its chances of winning, so once you learn all of its quirks you can tromp all over it rather easily. It is a rather fun experience to take over an entire AI-run country that lost because it's got 10 million cottages but no materials to build with (because it replaced all its mines), or no food for its army :-D
Update: Oh yeah! Put Farms on all the flood plains! They'll produce tons of food (which more than offsets the negative health from the floodplains)!In Civilization IV, how do I know whether to build a COTTAGE or a FARM in a square?
Awesome information! Found via google. Thanks!
Report Abuse
In Civilization IV, how do I know whether to build a COTTAGE or a FARM in a square?You need just enough farms to work all of your cottages.
Let's say that you can work 18 squares. 10 of them are grassland, 6 of them are plains, and 2 are flood plains. The grassland squares can take care of themselves. No problems there. The flood plains give you extra food. So far, so good. However, those 6 plains squares will be needing farms to help them. Because the flood plains give you one extra food per square, you only need to come up with ten more food. That means five farms are necessary, with thirteen cottages. At that point, your city will stall for growth, until you learn better technology.
This is a simple but highly effective strategy that work on all difficulty levels, except perhaps for the highest.
if theres something that can be farmed there then build a farm but if its nothing special build a cottage (it turns into a town thing later on)
No comments:
Post a Comment