Commonly Used Acronyms in the Civ Community

10 FAQs before Declaring a War

A Guide to Civics

The intention of this article is to give hints and tips about when and how to use the different Civics in Civilization 4.

For each civic there is a note on availability, followed by a short description of the effects/costs, diplomatic implications, comments on synergy with other game elements (other civics, leader traits, buildings, game settings, common strategies) and a final summary on the usefulness of the civic.

Any Feedback is highly appreciated and the guide will be updated with comments and strategies people post here (credits will be given here in the first post).My (high) aim is to provide a comprehensive database on the complex subject of civics.

Additional Credits for contributing interesting aspects, strategies and correcting inadequate information: genjiboy, Heroes, Krikkitone, Orca, Samson.

Some General Thoughts on Civics in Civ4

Maintenance

Note: Roland Johansen has done a great article about civic upkeep.

Civics are divided into 4 upkeep categories: no, low, medium and high. As a very rough rule of thumb you will pay 0 for zero, x for low, 1,5-2x for medium and 2-3x for high upkeep civics.The exact values depend on your number of cities and your population.

With a growing empire and increasing inflation, civic upkeep can really drain from your treasury. If you consider which civics to use, always keep the upkeep as an additional factor in mind - if you are unsure which civic is the better one, then the cheaper one is usually the better idea. Perhaps with the exception of Environmentalism, all the high-upkeep civics offer strong advantages. But if go for them, you should check if you can really use them to a certain extent - running Vassalage only pays if you build enough units, while Organized Religion is a waste if you are busy to build up your army.


Spiritual

I haven’t mentioned spiritual as a factor in most of the strategy/synergy sections (with Slavery and Nationalism as exceptions; for why see the civic article) for one reason - it is just plain useful to civics in general. The smooth government transition without anarchy transforms in two advantages: The freedom to change when and as often as necessary.

When just means the independence of things as wars, golden age or wonder races. Without interfering anarchy, there is no need to wait with a revolution. If a better option shows up, switch (to be correct, there is still a restriction regarding minimum time between two revolutions, but that’s only rarely a real problem).

The second benefit is the fact that you don’t have to think about if switching (and eventually switching back again soon) is worth the anarchy. Without the spiritual trait, you have to keep an eye on the number of switches you make in a game - if you accumulate to many anarchy turns over time, it may hurt your progress. Sometimes the anarchy just eats up the small advantage the new civic would give you, especially if the benefits are needed only temporarily (for example, “hurry civics” as Slavery or Universal Suffrage, the “draft civic” Nationalism or Bureaucracy, if you go for a wonder in your capital) - then you will either drop the switch altogether or at least delay it to make a “big revolution” (see below for this strategy for non-spiritual civs).
Spirituals effect also tends to rise in Epic or Marathon games.Not so much by the fact the anarchy period is at minimum 2 turns and can easily scale up to 4 (this is counterbalanced by every turn being "less" valuable), but because unit movement isn't modified - a "quick" switch to Slavery and Nationalism without Spiritual to stop an enemy attack will need three turns(!) to show an effect; three turns in which moreover everything in your empire stands still.


Organized

The organized trait is the second one which has an direct impact on civics.

Organized shifts the balance towards the civics with (higher) maintenance, which are usually the ones with a greater impact and stronger effect….and those suited for a more aggressive and (regarding your empires population) repressive playing style.If you compare a (war-monger) combination of Police State, Vassalage, Caste System, Mercantilism and Theocracy with for example Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, Emancipation, State Property and Free Religion (large empire going for cottages), you will clearly see the different impact of Organized.

To sum up, the effect here can be significant (if you adopt your general “big plan”) to meaningless (if you don’t). That’s also the reason why Organized is usually rated as the weakest trait - however, if at all, that's only partly true.For the civic effect depending on the playing style yes, but you also get cheaper Lighthouses and more important Courthouses - both directing to faster expansion.Not a bad thing in Civ4.


When to change? (applies mainly for non-spiritual civs)

The question is nearly as difficult as the one dealing with what to change. As usually there is not a single correct answer. You have to consider different situations and factors.

First of all it is important to distinguish the first, initial change in a civic column from later changes.

In case of the initial change, the straight advice in most of the cases is simply: Change as soon as it possible without. The initial civics do nothing for you except draining low maintenance. Sure, most of the civics you will get first access to in the different columns (Hereditary Rule, Bureaucracy/Vassalage, Slavery/Caste System, Mercantilism and Organized Religion) have a higher upkeep, but the give you some advantage and the real cost for this advantage is lower (because you have to subtract one maintenance level in your calculation - the level you have to pay for the starters anyway!)

Things are more complicated when changing from a “real” civic to another. Again, switching ASAP is usually not a bad idea - simply because getting a better civic sooner is better and because in a growing economy a turn of anarchy becomes more and more expensive, if the game progresses.

However, some circumstances might make a delayed revolution a better idea. It is for example not a good idea to switch during a golden age (however, the mistake would rather triggering the Golden Age before the switch in most cases) or when you need every turn in a wonder race or for building units in a case of emergency (of course with the exception of a switch to something which helps especially in those situations).

Even if no such special situation makes waiting worth, the concept of “big revolutions” can do so. Instead of switching only one civic in a revolution, you can change up to 5. The anarchy penalty rises too, but not in linear way. You can switch up to 3 civics at one time and will still suffer only one turn anarchy. So you can minimize the turns lost to anarchy if you wait for example a few turns to get another tech which enables a new civic.

And last but not least there may be economic reasons - don’t underestimate the pressure high cost civics can lay on your economy. Especially when having the concept of a big revolution in mind, it might be tempting to make a big change - for example when going to war, switching from low cost “peace” civics to the repressive ones. Make sure you have a healthy economy, a full treasury or a Great Merchant around. Otherwise you might come into trouble soon. Wars are already expensive in Civ4 without the political dimension (more units to support, units must be supplied in enemy lands, enemies eventually pillaging the land, unit upgrades, bribery for allies etc.), so those extra civic costs might lead to strikes or at least a serious drop in your research efforts. A bad move here can be devastating, since you have to wait a few turns to be able to correct it again.

The Government Column

Special notes: The special thing about this column is that you can get access to all civics very early - if you are willing and lucky enough to build “The Pyramids”. The immediate availability of all the civics of course change their relative values, so my rather general advices might fail here.

And there is a second special thing about it…21 out of 26 leaders have their favorite civic inside this column, so your decision here can have an important influence on how getting along with the other leaders…

Hereditary Rule

Prerequisite/availability: Monarchy (classic era)
Effect: +1 happiness per military unit inside a city
Upkeep: Medium
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Alexander, Catherine, Hatshepsut, Huayna Capac, Kublai Khan and Louis XIV.
Synergy/strategies: Organized, Vassalage, Nationalism, Theocracy, OCC, cold or general defensive wars (especially AW) , ressource-scarce maps

Summary: The good old military police and better than ever before. No more upper limit. But it comes now with a hefty price, too. Beside the unit upkeep, the civic itself will cost you a substantial sum to maintain. Nearly every other way to produce happiness will be cheaper, but sometimes there is no other way to stay in the "yellow faces" (mainly because of few religions and/or resources).Then it is the right choice, because avoiding unhappy citizens is a high-priority goal. And unless you own the Pyramids, it is the best what you can get for a long time. Otherwise, try to leave it ASAP…if you get access to a new government civic, check if you really need HR any more. If most of the happiness is lost due overflow, consider switching immediately.Even if you can live with the costs (which indeed tend to become less of a problem, if your cities grow really big), you will at least miss the benefits of Universal Suffrage, as soon as it becomes available.
On the diplomatic table, the civic puts you at good relations (usually a permanent + of 1-3, depending on how long you are in the civic and on how keen the leader is about foreign politics) with 6 other leaders…that’s more than with any other civic!


Representation

Prerequisite/availability: Constitution (renaissance era)
Effect: Every specialist (including settled down ‘super-specialists’) yields 3 extra research; the biggest 5 (or 6?…I‘m unsure if this a flat number or something dependent on map size) cities in your empire get 3 extra happiness.
Upkeep: Low
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Bismarck, Cyrus, Caesar, Napoleon, Victoria
Synergy/strategies: Caste System, Mercantilism, Pacifism, Philosophical, Organized, OCC - FCC , smaller maps(?),GP-based strategies.

Summary: Representation is the second available choice in the government column and it can be very useful in different situations. Obviously, if you rely very heavily on specialists (and if you are perhaps running some more pro-specialist-civics) and also if your empire is rather small, because then it is your weapon against unhappiness.
But even without such special circumstances, it is in most cases superior compared to HR. You pay less maintenance and despite you get the happiness usually where you need it most (=in your big cities).And of course your troops are freed again to do what they should - defend and attack.
Even when Universal Suffrage becomes available (a tech later, if you have planned for it), you might be better off with staying in Representation. Unless you have money to burn or you have “cottaged” your land early, Representation will often fit better. You can still switch later if necessary.


Police State

Prerequisite/availability: Fascism (industrial era)
Effect: 25% more hammer output, if building military units; -50% war wariness
Upkeep: High
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Genghis Khan, Isabella, Montezuma, Peter, Qin Shi Huang
Synergy/strategies: Jails, Mount Rushmore, Heroic Epic, Extended and bloody offense warfare (especially AW), Drydocks, Vassalage, Theocracy, Organized, Aggressive

Summary: Well, I don’t think there is much to say about when this civic helps you and when it doesn’t do you anything good. It you are at peace (and plan to stay here), move long - there is just nothing you will find here except a near-to-useless high maintenance civic. If you are attacked, ask your self: Is the production bonus worth to sacrifice other choices? Keep in mind, WW is no longer an issue if you just defend your self! Nationalism will literally cost you much less and might offer a better effect.
What makes it really shine is the second bonus…war wariness can easily force you to end a war, because it gets more and more difficult to maintain a productive economy, when you try to conquer and things start to get rough. PS puts an end to this. Add jails and the Mount Rushmore wonder…and no unhappy people will stop you from dominating the world with your guns. You will also enjoy better relations with other leaders who like to repress their people in the same manner…


Universal Suffrage

Prerequisite/availability: Democracy (renaissance era)
Effect: The Town improvement yields an extra hammer and you are allowed to rush buildings and units with gold.
Upkeep: Medium
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Asoka, Frederick, Gandhi, Roosevelt, Washington
Synergy/strategies: Free Speech, Financial, The Kremlin, Emancipation, Organized, “cottage-strategies”

Summary: If you have planned ahead with building lots of cottages, you are now able to earn your fruits. Now you will not only get tons of money out of them, but also a hammer on the top. On the financial side, you may you the rushing ability to build commerce and science boosters in those cities quickly. You will get the invested money back soon. To make use of the civic to its full extend, be sure to combine it with Free Speech.
The importance of commerce in Civ4 cannot be overstated. It is the thriving factor. It is also one of the main points why the AI is a lot tougher now - they now know how important it is, if you look at the sheer number of cottages they build. That’s why they stay competitive in the tech race until the end of the game…and it also makes the diplomatic aspect even more important here. The leaders who like Universal Suffrage are often among the successful ones, which means you are likely to have powerful friends.

The Legal Column

Special notes: The action in this column starts fairly late; the offered civics cover in a nice way the different needs of offensive/defensive war and early-/late game economy.

Vassalage

Prerequisite/availability: Feudalism (medieval era)
Effect: +2 exp. for new units, extra free unit support (5 flat + 1 for each 10 population points)
Upkeep: High
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Mehmed II. (WLs)
Synergy/strategies: Organized (see also text), Aggressive , Charismatic , Protective , anything else what grants free experience to new units (Barracks, Drydocks, Westpoint, The Pentagon, Theocracy, WLs Military Instructors), Police State, any situation with a need for a lot of new troops

Summary: Depending on your research path, Vassalage will be your first or second legal option. It offers one huge benefit (to be entirely correct there is a second: you get some extra free unit support, but this effect is at best a slight compensation for the maintenance, see end of the paragraph) - every unit you will built starts with two experience points more.

This guarantees the first promotion; under usual circumstances (barracks are in place), you get access to the second. Taking in account how combat in Civ4 works this is without a doubt a very desirable boost. Usually a small edge is enough to decide a combat and am promotion more or less can make this difference easily. It is also an effect you will feel for sure, as everyone - even the most peaceful player - has an need for a decent army - if just to prevent a nasty AI leader from attacking.

The only downside of Vassalage is the high maintenance cost. Nonetheless, if Vassalage is your first and therefore only option, switch (unless you really have to count every peace of gold). Whenever you plan to built up your forces, switch. In some games you will stay in vassalage for longer times or even the rest of the game, in others the next options will become one day the better choice. Just make sure to exploit the benefits of Vassalage as much as you can, while running it - the extra support will cover the unit maintenance partly (for Organized civs, this civic is even more interesting, as for the reduced cost, the free support alone is worth the expenses!) and experienced troops will still help you in future, if you have left Vassalage for a more peaceful agenda.


Bureaucracy

Prerequisite/availability: Civil Service (medieval era)
Effect: +50% production and commerce in capital
Upkeep: Medium
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Kublai Khan, Peter, Qin Shi Huang
Synergy/strategies: Spiritual, Organized , Organized Religion , general strong capital development/focus(f.e. important national wonders in capital placed, any civil or military production boosters) , small maps/empires, OCC


Summary: To put it in one sentence...it is all about your capital here, which will receive 50% additional production and commerce under this civic. Bureaucracy is always worth a thought, if it comes as first option in the column (even the worst capital has the Palace commerce bonus and likely some hammer sources). How competitive it stays against the other options, depends on location, and constitution of your capital and of course on the future plans you gave with it, too. If it is your unit-factory (high base hammer output, Heroic Epic, etc.), drowning in cottages, your main wonder construction site or even your only city (OCC), than this civic is for you. What makes Bureaucracy so powerful despite the fact that it affects only one of your cities, is Civ4s need for specialization - one specialized city may take the entire needs of your empire in one field (unit production, wonders, research,...). And if you can improve this performance by 50%, than it is usually worth a civic.

However, Bureaucracy tends to lose steam in later phases of most games. The reasons are quite simple - successful empires tend to expand or growth, which means civics get more expensive. Usually, the civic effects expand in a similar manner. Mercantilism gives you an extra specialist in every city, Hereditary Rule enables MP everywhere. Not so here - your entire empire pays with rising maintenance for a fairly constant reward. Freakenly realistic, if you think about real world bureaucracy and centralization..
The final catch is Free Speech becoming available. Without, Nationhood and Vassalage were the only
alternatives - ones which aren't too exciting in peacetimes. But usually the need for money and beakers rises in the endgame - and extra income from the cottages is just too important.


Nationhood

Prerequisite/availability: Nationalism (renaissance era)
Effect: Ability to draft up 5 units per turn, +2 happiness from barracks
Upkeep: None
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Bismarck, Churchill
Synergy/strategies: Protective , Aggressive , anything else what grants free experience to new units (Barracks, Drydocks, Westpoint, The Pentagon, Theocracy, WLs Military Instructors), Spiritual, sneak attacks, huge excess happiness and food without sufficient production

Summary: Basically, we have the reincarnation of Civ3s draft button, with happiness boosting barracks as icing on the cake - with no maintenance cost. Nationhood is the kind of civic you don't need very often and long, but if you need it, then you need it dearly and if possible immediately. Ironically, you will use this war civic most likely, if you have planned to play a peaceful game - there is always one Alex or Monty out there which is interested in your cities and wonders.So, in case a nasty AI surprises you, what does Nationhood for you?

Depending on the map Size, you can draft per turn up to 5 of the most modern defenders available(however, restricted to one per city and turn). The price is unhappiness (+3) and population loss (-1 pop point). The big difference to Civ3 is the training level of your drafted troops - while in Civ3 the recruits had 33%/50% less hit points compared to regular/veteran units (which often doomed them as pure cannon fodder), you get regular troops now - just the starting experience is halved. This means still a promotion from the start if a barrack is in place.

Without a doubt, Nationhood is no real long term option. +2 happiness is not enough to make it interesting in peacetimes and drafting more than one or two units will bring most cities down to anarchy and resulting starvation. You will likely leave Nationhood as soon as the initial ambush forces a repelled -usually for Vassalage-, even if the war continues. Only if the war goes very bad and you are under constant pressure, you might be forced to stay here. It is also the civic of heroic defeats and fighting to the last man...and even if it helps you to survive, you will need a large recovery period after that.

Since Nationhood is a mainly stop-gap against an invasion, it is most useful if you can enact it while the enemy is still approaching your city - so a good recon work tremendously increases the efficiency of this civic. Or pick a spiritual leader - always useful regarding civics, but being able to enact and draft in the same turn is something not to underestimate.


Free Speech

Prerequisite/availability: Liberalism (renaissance era)
Effect: +2 commerce for the town improvement, +100% culture
Upkeep: Low
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Washington
Synergy/strategies: Financial , Universal Suffrage , Emancipation , Printing Press , any "cottagemania"-strategy , culture is needed for victory (together with everything else yielding/boosting culture)

Summary: The second "late" option here. The boni speak for themselves: +2 commerce per town and +100% culture, low maintenance .The power and importance of cottages are well known, so it is easy to imagine how much impact the extra commerce has. Free Speech is the dominant peaceful option. This applies especially, if you are going for a cultural victory. Though there is still a niche for Bureaucracy (if your capital is among the three cities and you are racing for an important wonder), doubled culture is worth 6 cathedrals and all the Prerequisite temples, not to speak of the advantage in tech race.
It offers little direct benefit for the warmongers, but if you are currently not fighting for your life or building up you main attack force, you should consider it despite - maintaining or even upgrading an army is expensive.

The Economic Column

Special notes: It is the column which is enabled latest by far, it contains (IMHO) the weakest and the strongest civic of all and also one of the few with a negative effect.

Mercantilism

Prerequisite/availability: Banking (medieval era)
Effect: All foreign trade routes are closed, every city gets a "virtual" specialist (which doesn't drain one citizen from work)
Upkeep: Medium
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Tokugawa
Synergy/strategies: Representation, Caste System, Organized, Pacifism, Philosophical; AW, warmongering or bad diplomatic relations in general, balanced GP strategies, Parthenon, Sistine Chapel, Statue of Liberty

Summary: Mercantilism will be the first available choice in the economic department, but if planned properly Free Market is only one tech away. So it is kind of different to the other “first” civics, were switching over immediately is usually a no-brainer. Things get even more though to evaluate, when taking in account that Mercantilism has a substantial downside beside the upkeep - you will lose all of your foreign trade routes. Unless special circumstances are in place, I usually do not even think about revolting to Mercantilism, but try to get hands on economics ASAP to use Free Market, which can be shortly described as the complete opposite, if you look at what it does.

But now the more interesting part…when to use Mercantilism? Despite all the negative elements connected to it, in some situations the extra specialist is more useful than an extra foreign trade route:

a) You are in or near an AW situations or your overall diplomatic are just to worse to allow (m)any active OB-treaties. Obviously, this is what it is made for it. The penalty doesn’t hurt you anymore, while Free Market offers you zero compared to a free specialist.

b) You are pursuing an GP-strategy and maybe you have some of the wonders mentioned under “synergies” around. Of course then every specialist helps. However, think twice before giving in to this temptation - Mercantilism is not perfectly suited for this strategy. The most effective way to get a cabinet full of GP is creating a single city, which accumulates as many points as possible. Mercantilism however tends to add few in this case.Most points will be wasted because of the escalating costs of later GPs.
What I described as “balanced”-GP strategy (=distributing the GPP sources between several cities) is less effective from the view of maxing out GP, but often not to avoid (no food-powerhouse, cap of two national wonders per city etc.).In the case, Mercantilism can be indeed a valuable part of the big picture.

c) You have a lot of low-developed cities. Mercantilism's flat one-specialist-per-city bonus obviously has the biggest value, if a city is small - adding a specialist to a size one city without using the citizen to create it means doubling the number of productive people in the city.If combined with Representation and Caste System, you get at decent boost for research this way, while you are able to use the specialist for what is most important (f.e. getting the first border expansion for a new built or conquered city quick).

Nonetheless (and completely according to real history), Mercantilism is in most games only a temporarily good choice. If not FM means the end for it, then State Property will do this job.


Free Market

Prerequisite/availability: Economy (renaissance era)
Effect: All cities get an additional foreign trade route.
Upkeep: Low
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Mansa Musa
Synergy/strategies: Financial, Bureaucracy, Organized, Harbor + other buildings which give extra routes, many OBs, “big” games (huge maps, many opponents), everything which increases commerce yield in your cities.

Summary:Many of what could be said about FM is already noted in the paragraph above, because FM is to a large extend the complete opposite of Mercantilism…and so, no wonder, the best moments to use it are non-isolationistic strategies. In theory, a few OB-treaties will be enough to receive the extra trade route; however, more trading partners tend to give you more lucrative routes (just because there are more possible destinations to choose from!).Also everything which increases commerce (many cottages, buildings, civics, shrines, settled down specialists,…) in your cities, will fuel the effect of FM, because the game “connects” rich cities with other rich cities and calculates the yield of trade routes this way.

Now, how to rate FM? Without a doubt, it is the most flexible and easy-to-use civic in the column. Even if you don’t care much about synergies, it is difficult to be completely wrong with it. Except complete AW games, it is very unlikely that you end up without a single OB (at least on bigger maps)…and if you just met this condition, you will get a decent reward out of it. Add low upkeep and you will have a nice civic which gives you extra money. Usually, it is the right choice as soon as it shows up - either for the rest of the game or at least until SP gets available.

But despite it is the right choice very often, I wouldn’t call it the most powerful choice. For the reasons, see the next paragraph…


State Property

Prerequisite/availability: Communism (industrial era)
Effect: No more distance maintenance in your cities. Watermills and Workshops yield one more unit of food.
Upkeep: No
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Mao
Synergy/strategies: Watermill and Workshop-spam, Games aimed at domination win, early GP-strategies, warmongering, Universal Suffrage, Vassalage, Theocracy, Aggressive, Expansive

Summary: Any rating is always dependent on the playing style to a large degree, so you might differ, if I rate SP as the most powerful civic of all. And even my rating needs further explanation… ”most powerful” just means that it is probably the civic which might give you the biggest reward - well, if you are able and willing to invest enough to exploit it to its full extend (that's also the reason, why it isn’t overpowered!). I’m not claiming that it is the only viable choice; in fact in most games you will get more out of FM, just because its effects are easier obtain.

SP offers three pluses:

First of all, it is a zero-cost civic. Normally, I wouldn’t emphasize it in this way. But usually it is either the way that there is a direct drawback for zero upkeep (Pacifism: extra upkeep for military units) or it is just offset by the fact that the positive effects of the civic are restricted or hard to get.

For SP however, you will at least (nearly) always save some money from the second advantage. No distance maintenance in your cities. OK, you will smile and move on in an OCC, but apart from that the effect is somewhere between “nice” over “alone enough to switch to SP” to “saves me from bankrupt”. An empire similar to the former British or Soviet will cost you dearly without SP.

The third thing is probably the most interesting, but also the one which needs most work: Extra food from the watermill and workshop improvement. While it is just the icing on the cake in case of the watermill (it is already a nice choice without SP), it completely turns the tide for the workshops.

A workshop is a niche improvement under normal circumstances. Unless you locally drown in food, the food penalty hits just to hard. Moreover, mines are a big competitor, because they to do the same without taking away arable land and might even grant you a new resource deposit one day. But under SP, a workshop means simply +3 hammers! Cities with enough hills still do not need them…but all those flatland cities in grassland or near a river can be turned into real factories. 10 citizens can yield 30 base hammers this way… If you are among those who always miss hammers dearly and wish to be back in the Civ3s paradise of mined grassland, then welcome in the realm of State Property! The power of such a factory-wonder is multiplied by the fact you can use it to hit the AI on a weak point - they are famous with everything connected to commerce and research, but they often lack the hammers to build the fancy toys for their army.

The only downside (of which I’m glad it is in!) it the fact that you need a strong worker force to transform your infrastructure this way. And while it perfectly plays together with an early farm/GP-strategy (don’t be shy to replace the farms with workshops - with escalating GP costs, you will usually only sacrifice few GLs from the moment on SP becomes available), it will make you cry to tear down developed cottages. It might still make sense in some cases, but be careful then…if you transform too early, you might fall back in tech because of you depleting income. And with the new combat system, Tank vs. Modern Armour is nothing to search for, even if you have the numerical advantage on your side.


Environmentalism

Prerequisite/availability: Medicine (Industrial Era)
Effect: +6 health in every city; also +1 happiness per jungle/forest tile inside the city radius
Upkeep: Medium
Diplomatic relations bonus with: -----
Synergy/strategies: Organized, Expansive, low resource situations, “green strategies” (keeping forests, lumber mills), high unhealthiness through power generation or buildings, wars which disrupt resource trading

Summary: ***REMOVED for overhaul because of the latest patch changes regarding Environmentalism ***

The Religious Column

Special notes: Unlike the civics of the other columns, the ones of the religious section need an additional component to work - religion. In case of the first three, you will only reap the benefits inside a city, if you have a state religion AND if this state religion is present in this city. Free Religion abandons the state religion concept and depends instead on having as many different religions as possible inside a city. So the usefulness of all the non-default civics depends highly on the religious situation in your empire and the thump rule “everything is better than the default civic” is not entirely true here. The three state-religion civics (can) cause high direct or indirect costs, so Paganism is indeed a real choice, as long as you don’t have established religion in most of your cities.

Organized Religion

Prerequisite/availability: Monotheism (Ancient Era)
Effect: +25% speed, when constructing buildings or wonders; training of missionaries is possible without having a monastery
Upkeep: High
Diplomatic relations bonus with: ---
Synergy/Strategies: Wonder/cathedral resources(Marble, Stone, Copper), Industrious, forest-chopping for building projects, State Property, Universal Suffrage

Summary: Your first option in the religious column. The general note on religious civics applies especially to OR. Unless you have founded one of the early religions yourself, the chance is quite high that you have no access to religion, when the civic becomes available. In this case, wait with a switch. Even if the absolute sum is not much in those early turns, you will need every piece of gold - and paying for getting zero doesn’t sound like a good idea, well?

If religion has spread to your empire and a state religion is declared, a switch makes usually sense. +25% hammers for buildings/wonders are a huge boost in the beginning, where you need to get the stuff out as fast as possible. And not to forget the second advantage - missionaries without monasteries. It makes sure that all your new cities can get the production bonus at once and it allows sending out a lot of those guys to your neighbors to bring them in line. However, if you are involved in serious wars and your cities are busy with pumping units out, OR doesn’t help you. It can be also problematic on higher difficulties, because then the high upkeep might lay a heavy burden on your treasury.

Overall, the usefulness tends to decrease over time. If you weight extra building speed vs. free experience, great people points or extra happiness (that’s in short what the alternatives - described in detail below - offer), all of the latter three are usually more important in the later game. However, the second advantage might open another niche for OR later. In the moment you research Scientific Method, you lose the chance to build new monasteries. If you have build enough of the ones you need, you are lucky. If not, you have a problem, when you are pursuing for example a cultural victory, for which are cathedrals extremely helpful. OR eliminates this problem by allowing cities to build missionaries of all the religions they contain, regardless of the presence of monasteries - so this effectively means you can spread every religion over your entire empire, if you just have one city with this certain religion.


Theocracy

Prerequisite/availability: Theology (Medieval Era)
Effect: +2 EXP for new built units; no spreading of none-state religions
Upkeep: Medium
Diplomatic relations bonus with: Saladin
Synergy/Strategies: Vassalage, Barracks, The Pentagon, Westpoint, Aggressive, Organized, Nationalism, The Heroic Epic, Police State, any war or cold war situation, domination or conquest victories

Summary: Theocracy is Vassalages little sister - the main effect is the same, units start with 2 experience points extra. Like it is true for most war civics, there is not much to say about when you should use them. If you plan to build a lot of units in the near future (for whatever reason), take this. And if you can, take Vassalage too. The synergy between both is one of the strongest among all civics - both improve exactly the same aspect of the game and in case of experience, a cumulative bonus is especially valuable. Yes, you might argue that one of those civics is enough to reap the second promotion immediately (assuming barracks are in place). That’s true and I’m far away from saying they are only worth to be taken together - but you just waste their full potential. Believe me, 6 or 8 exp from the start matters, because your units will likely get the third promotion right after the first fight with 8. Also every new promotion means a kind of instant “medipack” for your unit (wounds are partly healed).It can make the difference between losing or winning a fight in many cases.

Medium upkeep is an absolutely fair charge for what Theocracy does, especially if you compare it with OR or Pacifism. Until Free Religion shows up (which is a great all-round civic), Theocracy is not only the best, but also the cheapest solution in any game which involves decent military action or just a big standing army to prevent it.

The second effect of Theocracy (no natural or missionary-caused spread of minor religions in city with your state religion) is a kind of a double-edged sword. It prevents you from reaping the benefits of having several religions in your cities (more happiness, culture, science).But OTOH, you also prevent that a nasty opponent spreads his own founded religion into your city and gains line of sight and shrine income. How strong the impact of both aspects is depends however on the extend minor religions have already spread in your country (because existing ones aren‘t removed). If nearly all of your cities have already a second or even third religion, Theocracy isn’t a big loss anymore - because spreading religions via missionaries in this situation is very cost-intensive anyway. For preventing the enemy from gaining benefits out of his or her mother religion it is just the other way round - if they haven’t got their feet in your door yet, it is the best time to close it.


Pacifism

Prerequisite/availability: Philosophy (Medieval Era)
Effect: +100% GPP (=Great People Points)
Upkeep: no direct civic upkeep, but 1 Gold per military unit
Diplomatic relations bonus with: ---
Synergy/Strategies: Philosophical, The Parthenon, The National Epic, Caste System, Representation, Mercantilism, Industrious, any major GP-strategies, cultural victories

Summary: If you are in love with Great People, this civic is for you. Although the doubled amount of GPP does not transform into 100% more great people (the increase is probably rather 20-30 %), the civic pays out if used properly. The real benefit isn’t the pure extra number, but the fact that you will get your GPs earlier - and one of the basic rules of Civilisation is that earlier advantages weight more.
So they question is when to use Pacifism?

If you are running a game heavily leaned towards GP, of course. You might run Pacifism then until the end, but you should still keep in mind that the effect fades the more GPs you have already gotten. Taken to the extreme: At some point, even the 100% increase will not yield to another GP because of the geometrical cost increase.

If GP are just a (minor) part of your strategy, you might consider a quick switch when it becomes available (to rush out some) and eventually later again, when you desperately need another Great Person, while lacking enough base GPP. In any case, try to max out the synergetic potential of Pacifism. Especially the combination with Caste System can do miracles - there is rarely a better way to get a special GP in a short time.

Probably not necessary to point out, but for the sake of completeness…if you don’t have wonders and specialists around which yield GPP, move along - Pacifism has no second benefit, but a hidden cost trap. Don’t be fooled by no upkeep, the extra cost for military units will usually easily turn it into a quasi high-upkeep civic. Yes, in theory all those famous Great People might lead you to a peaceful victory , where you don’t need any weaponry and therefore unit maintenance. But the days of no-unit-games are gone.Civ4s diplomacy system relies on relation modifiers and is quite reliable in this part, but you will need the plain cold steel, too. There is always someone out there who is jealous about your wonders and cities. Pacifistic games are best achieved with cold-war strategies - and that’s nothing to head for under Pacifism from the view of costs. To sum up the options …either build up a very healthy economy or use Pacifism only temporarily.


Free Religion

Prerequisite/availability: Liberalism (Renaissance Era)
Effect: +1 happiness per present religion inside a city; +10% research output; no more state religion and religious diplomacy modifiers
Upkeep: Low
Diplomatic impact: Relation bonus with Elisabeth; religion has no more impact on diplomacy
Synergy/Strategies: Organized, Expansive, Environmentalism, luxury resource shortages, peaceful-planned games and situations with high-tension in diplomacy, non-diplomatic victories (especially space race or cultural)

Summary: Your final choice in the religious column. A powerful tool, coming with low costs and offering a simple solution for unhappiness problems and granting a 10% increase in research on top - all you have to do is spreading as many religions as possible in every corner of the empire. Each present religion yields +1 happiness in your cities, before factoring in additional boni you might get out of built temples. Unless you have no happiness problems, because your are drowning in luxuries or your cities are small, you should seriously consider a switch.

The icing on the cake (the research bonus) is even independent of the number of religions in a city (maybe there must be one religion at all, not sure on this).10% may not sound to drastic, but if you keep in mind how expensive the late game techs have become with v1.52, you will be happy about every extra beaker.It can make the difference in a tight space race.

As usual there is also shadow or at least some more things to consider. First of all, don’t underestimate the difficulty of spreading religions with missionaries. If there is no or only a single religion present in a city, your chance of success is 100% or slightly below. If there is already a second religion, you might fail; three or more is just pure luck. So the gained extra happiness is usually 2 or 3, unless your are willing to invest vast amount of shields for missionaries (which can be sometimes worth nonetheless, when pursuing a cultural victory for example).

A second aspect is the loss of state religion. Beside the fact that the Spiral Minaret loses its effect , it has a serious impact on the diplomatic system in Civ4, which can be a boon or bust, depending on your situation. Free Religion both nullifies positive and negative modifiers caused by having the same or a different state religion. You will have no more problems with Isabella or Saladin hunting you for believing in the wrong faith, but you might experience cooled down relations with your former brothers in faith, too. The chance to get backstabbed and attacked is slower, but also the possibilities for trade or interventions on your side.

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Analysis of the Civilization Traits

Introduction

There are eight leader traits in the game, all with very concrete and tangible benefits. However, some of them give more and some of them give less benefit than what they look to be giving on the surface. I’m going to explain how much benefit each actually gives. This article will take the mathematical approach, as I’m measuring the magnitude of the traits’ bonuses, rather than subjectively comparing them.

Generally for All Traits

Most of the traits have one or more city improvements associated with it that it gains double production speed of. However that doesn’t always mean the improvement is procured twice as fast, because the 100% bonus to hammers is of the base production. So if you already have a forge, building an improvement associated with your trait will make the total production speed rise from 125% to 225%, rather than 250%.

Let’s say, for example, that you have the spiritual trait, which gives half price on temples (80 hammers). With no other production enhancing improvements the spiritual trait will account for half of the hammers needed (40 hammers). However, if you have a forge the spiritual trait will only account for 100 / 225 = 44,4% of the hammers needed (35 hammers). As more production enhancers are added (e.g. organised religion, factory) the percentage of the hammers that the trait bonus contributes becomes increasingly smaller. While this may seem minor and insignificant, in the big picture it can total up to a significant amount of hammers.

The Traits

Aggressive
Free Combat I promotion of melee and gunpowder units.

To a melee or gunpowder unit with no experience this trait is worth exactly what it says: a Combat I promotion giving 10% increased strength and equal to what the unit could achieve with 2 XP. As the unit levels up however, this combat I promotion rises in value. Let’s say you have a unit with 17 XP giving it four promotions, and you want it to eventually have the commando promotion. With the Combat I promotion from the Aggressive trait you would be able to take commando promotion now (Combat II - IV and then commando), but without it you would only be able to promote your unit up to Combat IV. For the non-aggressive civ the experience required to get the commando promotion and have a unit as good as the aggressive civ’s, is 26 which is 9 additional XP In this case the Aggressive trait is worth 9 XP In other words, the actual value of the aggressive trait is the amount of XP required to get the next promotion for a unit, providing you are upgrading in the Combat part of the promotion tree or that the Combat I promotion is useful to the unit. This means that the value of the trait increases with more experienced units because the XP required for a promotion is n^2 + 1. To put it more simple, if you are upgrading along the Combat part of the tree, the latest promotion you have chosen is your actual tangible benefit of having the aggressive trait.

Creative
+2 culture per city.

This trait is pretty straightforward magnitude-wise. It will always add 2 culture to the city’s base culture. This can be multiplied by cathedrals and a few wonders, but it should be noted that since the rest of the city’s culture production will also increase proportionally, the percentage of the city’s total culture that this trait is accountable for won’t change with the culture multiplicative improvements.

Expansive
+3 health per city.

This trait is also straightforward. The bonus is always 3 health for all cities and is never subject to multiplications or the like. The tangible benefit is between 0 and 3 food depending on how your health situation looks before and after the trait’s bonus is applied. It can also make the difference between whether a city is eligible for We Love the King Day or not, saving an average amount of upkeep per turn depending on what the city’s upkeep cost is.

Financial
+1 commerce on plots with 2 commerce.

Financial is a trait that requires more calculation. It adds to the cities base commerce and is therefore subject to modifiers. Improvements or civics that multiply the science, gold or culture output of the city will all increase the benefit of the financial trait providing you are allocating at least 10% of your base commerce to the category in question (science, gold or culture). Improvements or civics that multiply the base commerce (e.g. Bureaucracy) increase the benefit regardless of slider settings. In short, the benefit of the financial trait in absolute numbers is the base commerce it adds (number of tiles worked that produces at least 2 commerce) multiplied by any modifiers present in the city.

Calculating its effect in relative numbers is relevant too though. In this case the multiplicative improvements and civics makes no difference as they are applied to all base commerce, not the just the commerce from the financial trait. What matters is a comparison between commerce before and after the trait is applied. The largest increase financial can result in is 50%, if all tiles produce exactly 2 commerce before it’s applied. If a tile produces, for instance, 5 commerce, the advantage of adding the financial trait will be 20%. As a tile’s commerce increases further the relative benefit decreases. Of course tiles can also produce less than 2 commerce in which case the benefit is 0%. In short, the relative benefit of the financial trait always lies somewhere between 0% and 50%, depending on how much commerce is being produced in the individual tiles.

Industrious
Wonder production increased 50 percent.

The calculations about the actual benefits of the trait-specific building bonuses also apply to the industrious trait, as the wonder production bonus is applied in the exact same way. There really isn’t more to say about that as it’s already explained in that chapter.

Organised
Civic upkeep reduced 50 percent.

The benefit of the organised trait seems to be straightforward as it simply halves your civic upkeep expenses. However, the amount of gold that this trait saves you cannot be calculated just by looking at the remaining half that you are paying, because inflation factors in. By multiplying the upkeep that you appear to be saving with (1 + inflation rate) you will know how much gold this trait is actually saving you.

Another aspect of the organised trait to consider is the difficulty level. At lower levels the civic upkeep is relatively low and increases with difficulty level. As such the organised trait generally saves you more gold on the higher levels. The inflation rate is also higher on the harder difficulties, further increasing the benefit of organised on these difficulties.

Philosophical
Great People birth rate increased 100 percent.

This is perhaps the most discussed trait regarding the actual benefit. There are countless threads on this, but I’ll go through the non-subjective facts anyway.

The philosophical trait’s bonus works just like the trait-specific building bonuses and is subject to the same calculations regarding how much of the total output that it contributes. As with the industrious trait I won’t go into detail about this as it’s explained in the first chapter. The only difference is that the possible production enhancers are the Parthenon, the National Epic and the pacifism civic.

Other production enhancers aside, the philosophical trait produces 100% more GPP (Great People Points), but that doesn’t mean it produces 100% more GP (Great People) during the course of a game. This is because the cost of getting the next GP increases each time you get one and as such, getting a certain amount of extra GPP is worth less the more GP you have already produced. Through calculations which I won’t bother you with it appears that the philosophical trait results in 50% more GP during the course of a game, all other things being equal.

If you look at the amount of turns it will take to produce a certain amount of GP however, the philosophical trait accomplishes it twice as quickly. This is because we are talking about a predefined amount GPP, in which case the 100% extra production results in achieving the GPs twice as quickly.

Spiritual
No anarchy.

The spiritual trait appears to be a relatively easy trait to calculate the benefits of. It simply saves you the amount of hammers, food etc. that would have been wasted during the anarchy turn(s). It isn’t as simple as that, however, as cities will have to spend the turn after the anarchy to produce what they would have done during the anarchy and as such they are essentially wasting their latest turn. To put it simpler, your cities’ development are delayed by the amount of turns the anarchy lasts and because of that the penalty of the anarchy period is actually the latest turn(s) in the game. It isn’t your whole empire’s development that’s being delayed though, as units can still move, you still receive gpt payments from other civs etc. during anarchy. In short, the spiritual trait is worth more than just the amount of hammers, food etc. wasted on the anarchy turn(s) itself. It is rather worth what you would be producing at the end of the game.

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Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners

Sulla's Civilization IV Walkthrough

Tips for People Who Hate Civ4

Civ 3 is so much better right?

Wrong. All your strategies have stopped working and now you're sad because you have to learn a new game. But if you can stop being proud for just one second and read on -- or even just experiment -- you might learn a few things. And once you understand the method to Civ 4's madness, you'll start to love the game.

Civ 4 is a vast improvement on Civ 3 because strategy matters more than a recipe book.

1) Tip One: Expand, Expand, Expand!!!

The first thing you should do is turn your main city into a settler factory. Try to build as many cities as possible to grab as much land as possible. Be sure to build the occasional unit to defend your outermost cities.

If you don't get your third settler killed by a barbarian, you'll find that this surely puts you in a losing position by 250 AD, with your tech rate hovering around 10%, and the AI several techs ahead. Congratulations, you suck at Civ 4!

There are a few reasons why fast expansion is bad.

- Maintenance (more cities leads to a lot more maintenance!)
- Lack of improvements (if you're not generating a profit now, you can't afford to take on another city)
- Barbarians (yep, once barbarians discover archery and bronze working, they become a fearsome sight)

Not only that, but you don't NEED to expand like hell. Other than expansion, the following things generate money/research: religion, specialists, cottages. I won't say more than that. Having lots of cities isn't the be all and end all.

2) Tip Two: Micromanage Like Hell

As you approach the completion of a building or unit, be sure to juggle around your tiles so that way you don't overflow. Same thing with your research rate. By lowering your research rate before discovering Meditation, you can make sure that the AI discovers buddhism and you get left with jack squat.

Yep. You played with overflow, and actually paid the price.

Overflow is no longer something you have to juggle, because overflow isn't discarded, it's added to the next thing you build/research. Moreover, you WANT lots of overflow. In my experience, an AI got buddhism instead of me because I lowered my tech rate on the last turn of meditation. I reloaded, didn't lower my tech rate, and presto, my nation was the holy land of buddha.

3) Tip Three: Try to Grab All the Wonders

All the wonders are useful so try to grab all of them. Once you build your first, try to build all the others. Once you lose that one, take your excess cash and try to build another wonder. Once you lose that one, take your excess cash and try to build another wonder. Once your cities are without any kind of infrastructure, grab your ankles and brace yourself for Caesar to hit you with his Praetorians.

You simply cannot build all the wonders. Industrious civs will have an advantage on you. And marble/stone are also very helpful. And if you're not one of the first people to discover a tech, you can forget about even trying to build the corresponding wonder. You have to know what wonder will help you the most and plan towards it.

Not to mention that in the time it takes to build all those wonders, you could have libraries in all your cities and all your tiles improved. Or you could be the first person to have 8 horse archers. Wonders aren't the be all and end all.

4) Tip Four: Generate Lots of Cash and Buy Techs

Lower your tech rate to 0%. Absorb lots of cash. Now contact the AI. You can buy your first tech!

But wait, you need the alphabet to do that. So scratch that. Beeline to the alphabet. Now lower your tech rate to 0 and start buying those techs.

But nobody will sell you anything good, right? That's because the AI knows that their tech lead is more important than any amount of cash you can give them. They want to finish that wonder first. They want to keep you in the stone age while they get medieval on your buttocks.

The AI's tendency to hang onto its techs means that 100% research and trading for smaller techs won't work

How do you get around this?

THINK HARD. What technology do you REALLY need?

5) Tip Five: Keep the best defender in your cities, and pump out lots of the best attacker on your conquest

Swordsmen are the best attacker. And this game is exactly like Civ 3 -- your best defense is a good spearman. Keep two or three spearmen in each city, and build a stack of swordsmen and go after the AI.

Alright, so you just found out that your spearmen and swordsmen are incredibly vulnerable to axemen. Axemen have 5 strength to a swordsman's 6, but they gain huge bonuses against other melee units.

Building only one unit type is a surefire way to get yourself killed. Because that means the enemy only has to build one unit type to stop you. And the defender has a huge advantage from tile bonuses, city bonuses, and getting to 'choose' the ideal defender against whatever attacker you use. Attackers need to be SMART.

Read the manual. Really look at those units. Try to figure out the best counter for each one. And there IS a counter for each one. The line between offense and defense is blurred, too. Consider a defensive catapult waiting behind your city walls. Consider an offensive spearmen, to provide your marauding swordsmen a defense against war elephants. The more you mix your units, the harder it is for your opponent to deal with your case.

And a stack of units is expensive. You can't just keep them on the shelf. You have to use them.

6) Tip Six: Play the same way every game

Now that you've read these tips, you know a surefire to win every single Civ 4 game. A strategy that always works.

And that's "adapt". You need to be responsive to the situation on the ground, or else you're about as smart as a speak & spell.

Look at your starting technologies. Each Civ starts with 2 free techs, and they're never the same. Consider this your Civ's unique advantage. More than Civ 3, there's no surefire best path anymore. Which means that any techs you have give you an advantage towards SOME later tech that offers you some kind of benefit -- a religion, a new unit, a wonder, a key tile improvement, a building... You just have to figure out what tech you can get to first that will give you an early advantage.

Look at your traits. You have an advantage. Use it. As a philosophical leader, you should ask the best way to start generating great people. As an aggressive leader, you should ask yourself when you plan on attacking. As a financial leader, you should figure out how to start generating cash as soon as possible.

Look at the AI opponents around you. Genghis Khan is likely to pick on you. Isabella cares a lot about what religion you are. You need to address the strengths and desires of your neighbors, or else you'll find yourself very vulnerable.

The Summary

Snarkiness aside, if there's one thing that's still true of Civ 4 that was true of Civ 3 is that the early game is very important. But try not to think in terms of fast expansion. After seeing my units go on strike, this is the best advice I've come across.

Technology is always important in Civ, and in Civ 4 it's even more important. Getting your research roaring has little to do with holding an 100% research rate all the time. And fast expansion chokes your research. Put two and two together: if you're not pumping out settlers, there are lots of other things you can do to further your society's progress.

Yep, there are very few actual concrete tips in here. That's because it's been less than a week with the game, and I honestly don't know how to be the best.

But I do know how to be bad at Civ 4: play like it's still Civ 3.

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Traits, Warlords, and Synergy

• I tried to list the easiest to use traits at the top.
• Easiest to use isn't always the best.
• I focused mostly on the early part of the game.
• Most of these are to help average players become great players.
• Some great players may benefit too, learning a few new tricks.
• Big ups to Theoden for the vanilla trait-review. A lot of good stuff here, too.

• Synergy:
  
  Marble and Stone help rush wonders. Masonry will let you build Quarries, allowing you to tap these key resources. Locate and tap these resources early.
  
  There's not much else to say here except that you might find yourself chasing wonders, and end up on a path through all the religious techs (Polytheism and the Parthenon, Priesthood and the Oracle), with a strong opportunity to found Judaism (Monotheism, which requires Masonry) first. If you DO found a religion, don't neglect those Missionaries (Meditation), since you want your neighbors to share the same faith to keep you out of unncessary wars. Maybe one of those wonders you've built will pop you a Great Priest, letting you build a great shrine and spread your faith around.

• Synergy:
  
  The obvious statement is that you'll want to have at least a few Cottages early. Get Pottery, build cottages. Rivers and other luxury resources are key, however. Be sure to settle smart city locations, and unlock other key resource technologies such as Mining to tap Gold and Silver.
  
  If you're running lots of Cottages, there are several civics that leverage this. In particular is Universal Suffrage, which is available if you build the Pyramids (with Masonry). The bonus only kicks in with Towns, though, which means you have to wait a bit.
  
  The less obvious statement is that this trait actually has a HUGE coastal benefit. Coastal tiles produce two commerce each, leading to an easy commerce benefit. In order to take advantage of this, though, you'll need to build Lighthouses so you can get the extra food in the ocean to support further growth. Fortunately, this is accessible with Sailing, which also gives you ocean trade routes. Vital for any coast-loving player.
  
  The Colossus is the cherry on top. Available with Metal Casting, it generates additional wealth in every water tile. A financial civ with a lot of coastal cities and the Colossus is something fierce. The Great Lighthouse (Masonry) also plays into a heavy coastal strategy.

• Synergy:
  
  You CANNOT feed specialists unless you have the food resources to produce more than 2 food per tile. Survey those nearby food resources. If you see Cows and Sheep, get Animal Husbandry for Pastures. If you see Rice and Corn, get Agriculture. Learn to freeze growth at the exact right moment, to maximize your number of specialists.
  
  There are LOTS of other Great People generators. Get to Polytheism and the Parthenon. Why? +50% great leader birth in ALL cities. Get to Philosophy and the Pacifism civic. That's another +100% great leader birth in ALL cities. The real killer, though, is Literature. Not only does this unlock the National Epic, giving you +100 great leader birth in one city, but it lets you build the Great Library which pumps out Great Scientists by the boatload. Add it up and you can be swimming in great people.
  
  When you're running this specialist heavy economy, the Representation civic can generate you huge amounts of science. Getting the Pyramids can unlock this early. You might have to choose between the Pyramids and the Parthenon, and each has different benefits for a specialist economy in the short and long term. However, some lucky players can get both. If you're feeling ambitious, use the Pyramids to generate an early Great Engineer and use it to rush the Parthenon.

• Synergy:
  
  If you're the first to discover a unit, there's a good chance you can use it to grab a quick advantage. Horseback Riding and Iron Working are early favorites, although many have done serious damage with Elephants and Catapults (Construction), Crossbows (Machinery), or Macemen (Civil Service).
  
  Anything that gains you XP here is good. Vassalage (with Feudalism) and Theocracy (with Theology) are XP generating civics. Barracks or Stables (with Animal Husbandry) are vital here. You may also be able to take advantage of the Great Wall (with Masonry), suckering a Civ in allowing you to generate lots of Great Generals.

• Synergy:
  
  Aggressive Civs can find many of the same synergies of Charismatic Civs. Get the XP generating civics (like Vassalage and Theocracy). And if you're feeling sassy, try luring people behind your Great Wall to generate some quick Great Generals.
  
  But since this bonus only helps melee and gunpowder units, you'll want to make Axes or Swords the staple of your army. Bronzeworking and Ironworking are key. Mounted and ranged units won't gain you any specific advantage, but it never hurts to mix up your stacks to avoid being too vulnerable.

• Synergy:
  
  Protective Civs are a lot like Aggressive Civs in that they'll need to discover Feudalism or Theology early for their XP generating civics. You'll also want to produce a Barracks sooner. The key difference, however, is that you should have a strong preference for City Garrison 3. If you can get your units to City Garrison 3, they almost DOUBLE in defensive capabilities.
  
  Get Archery early, since it's ranged units that get the Protective bonus. If you can find yourself at Feudalism early, your Longbows might be a key to invincibility. Some people even use the Oracle (Priesthood) to slingshot to Feudalism early. It CAN be done.
  
  Okay, big deal. You have really strong defence, right?
  
  Here's the key. You can sometimes get away with defending your cities with as few as 2 units with City Garrison 3. This means you keep a VERY small defensive army. This can save you maintainance costs, allowing you to pour more into science, to settle more cities, or go on the offense. You might be able to find an economic synergy with some of the Financial trait's strategies, or find a warmongering synergy with some Aggressive strategies. You don't even have to be Financial or Aggressive to use these strategies.

• Synergy:
  
  You'll want to combine this trait with Pottery, in order to get those Cottages happening. If you're grabbing those great city locations fast, you're going to need an economy capable of supporting the maintainance costs. It's a good thing the Wheel is on the way to Pottery, since it means you'll be able to hook up those resources you find.
  
  Keep in mind that the ocean can be a great source of wealth, especially if you have early acecss to Sailing. Rivers too. Keep your economy strong.
  
  And do not neglect defence. You should either have Archery or Bronzeworking early, so you can defend your great city locations. Bronzeworking can be especially valuable, since you can use it to chop down trees, generating production to knock out those settlers (and defenders) faster.
  
  A key advantage with this one can be the Great Wall, from Masonry. Once you've built up your empire, the great wall can protect you from barbarians without having to spend as much time pumping out defensive units. (Keep in mind Imperialistic has a Great General bonus too. You might be able to lure people behind the great wall to get Great Generals REALLY fast.)

• Synergy:
  
  This trait, surprisingly, has the most in common with the Imperialistic Trait. Its advantage comes when you build lots of settlers and grab the best locations. Speed is the essence of your strategy.
  
  Use Cottages (Pottery), rivers, and oceans (Sailing) to pay down the maintainance costs of your faster growth. Be sure to defend your mass of cities with Archers (Archery), or Axemen (Bronzeworking)... and chop trees to keep things moving fast. You can catch your breath and consolidate your holdings later.
  
  While Creative civs have the benefit of cultural defence, the Great Wall (Masonry) can be great for keeping barbarians out. With your huge borders, this can be especially useful.

• Synergy:
  
  Take advantage of that fast Granary. You can't do this if you don't get to Pottery early on.
  
  Some players may find that happiness tends to inhibit their city growth more than health. However, the Hereditary Rule civic is an easy target with big payoffs. This civic generates happiness for every military unit you have, with no upper limit. If you can discovery Monarchy early, or build the Pyramids, you can tap this civic and EASILY support 3 more population than the average Civ.
  
  Slavery can be a huge advantage of these additional people. With Bronzeworking, you can access the slavery civic and turn those population points into production. Excess happiness can keep the remaining citizens content. Slavery can be extremely potent.
  
  Or you can let those people live. Combine this with some of the Specialist-heavy strategies recommended under the Philosophical trait... even if you're not Philosophical. Where you have lots of population and food, you have can have specialists and great people.

• Synergy:
  
  In the long run, yes, you will want to discover those key civic technologies. Civil Service and Theology will be key technologies as they allow you to grab Bureaucracy and Theocracy (respectively). This will let you start to take advantage of swapping.
  
  But in the short run, a Spiritual Civilization generally (but not always) has instant access to Mysticism. That means they have the BEST chance of founding a religion, and a decent chance of keeping multiple religions out of the hands of other players. GET THOSE RELIGIONS. Polytheism, Meditation, and Monotheism are key. Having Mysticism also gives you quick access to Stonehenge, which generates a valuable Great Prophet, which can help you to found the next religion before your opponent.
  
  While on the religious path, you may find yourself discovering Priesthood. This gives you the earliest and easiest access to Temples, which let you run Priest specialists. Most Spiritual civilizations have early enough access to Priests that they can generate Great Prophets, if they so choose. An early Great Prophet can help you access Theology, Divine Right, or Civil Service. See this article for how you might be able to leverage this to your advantage.
  
  Early access to Priesthood also unlocks the Oracle. The obvious benefit of this is that it lets you discover a free technology like Metal Casting or Construction, and also generates a Great Prophet. However, if you plan accordingly, you can use this slingshot to discover Feudalism (through Monarchy), or Civil Service (through Code of Laws). You haven't seen anything until you've seen Longbows or Bureaucracy by 1000 BC!
  
  Another key is that the path to Judaism and Christianity flows right through Masonry. That gives you a perfect opportunity to grab the Pyramids, giving you a slew of Civics to swap between.
  
  And an addition from VoiceOfUnreason, it's important to note that many big civics come with religions. Philosophy offers both Pacifism and Taoism. Theology offers both Theocracy and Christianity. Monotheism offers both Organized Religion and Judaism. Code of Laws offers both Caste System and Confucianism. You'll want to prioritize at least a few of these, if not all of them.

• Synergy:
  
  There are two main synergies here.
  
  One is that of expansion. Organized can support a larger empire with as much efficiency as Financial, and with LESS EFFORT on your part. If you wanted to start an early war, this would be the civic that would let you do it. If you fast track to Iron Working or Horseback Riding, you can catch the enemy off guard and be able to actually pay for those huge civics costs. The maintainance from your cities can also be taken care of easily with your cheap Courthouses, if you aim for Code of Laws. Keep in mind that civics costs rise with your population, but city maintainance costs increase exponentially with your number of cities. Organized lets you expand (and conquer) with less worry about those costs.
  
  There are also peaceful synergies. If you hightail it for Monotheism, you'll also get the expensive Organized Religion civic, and access to the Pyramids (with Masonry). The Pyramids unlock a slew of civics, and Organized Religion is one of the most expensive civics. Along with a good shot at founding Judaism, you just have to learn how to put these civics to good use.
  
  These two approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some people manage to juggle both, although it's harder at higher levels. Some people build up first, and then launch a war. You can also be sinister, though, conquering the enemy civ with the Pyramids rather than building it themselves.
  
  Think about ways to boost your population. Expansive strategies can sometimes apply here.

WoundedKnight's Strategy Guide

Table of Contents

1. Learn the Rules
2. Civilization Selection
3. Leverage Your Strengths
4. Religions
5. City Placement
6. Civics Guide
7. City Improvement
8. Specialization
9. Wonders
10. Great People
11. Chop-Rushing
12. Technology
13. Military Strategy

1. LEARN THE RULES

The best-spent two hours for my CIV strategy skills was spent pouring over the civilopedia to understand the rules, the tech trees, improvements, units, etc. It's much easier to do well if you have a clear strategy and know where you want to go. For example, some techs offer bonuses to the first discoverer: a free great person, a free great tech, or starting a religion. Obviously these techs are generally a priority to get first, while others with benefits that are not time-sensitive can wait or be picked up in trade.

MAP CHOICE

The choice of maps can have a major impact upon gameplay, and therefore upon the strategy you may choose to adopt. For example:

Continental and archipelago maps promote early isolation of civs into 2-3 large groups (continents) or even individual civs (archipelago). Your continent or island may not have access at all to key resources like stone, marble, horses, and iron, which can make your construction or military plans more difficult. It is also more difficult to keep your population happy, as your island or continent may contain only 2 or 3 luxury resources. Your tech rate will also be slower, because there are fewer partners to trade with. On continent maps, I often find myself having to research mundane techs like archery or animal domestication because there are not enough proximate AI players to become a reliable tech broker. On the plus side, these maps can provide for a more interesting late game than Pangaea maps by allowing longer buildup of your competitors and preventing them from being weakened or destroyed in early-game rush. Naval combat adds an interesting element that Pangaea or large land-mass players do not fully experience. The early isolation makes it easier to stay at peace throughout the early era, or to isolate and crush enemies on your starting island without other players interfering.

Maps with a large amount of land and little water (oasis, highland, lakes, etc) pose major long-term barbarian challenges. There is so much land that the barbarians continue to arise from territory covered by the fog of war until late in the game. Defending your cities requires extra effort on such maps. On the plus side, you may be able to capture a city or two from the barbarians.

Pangaea and other land-mass maps offer predictable early availability of all tech-appropriate resources, although you may have to fight for them. However, such maps can be less interesting if the player becomes very dominant in the early or mid-game.

Maps with strange geometric land arrangements like inland sea result in high city upkeep costs for an expanding civilization, as distance arrangements between your cities are often not optimal due to geographic constraints.

Large land mass games provide more competitors, and therefore reduce the player’s chance of winning the religion, tech, or wonder race. On a standard map or smaller on balanced (noble) difficulty, a player without religious techs can often still beat the AI players to Hinduism and/or Judaism. On large and huge maps, chances become slimmer. There are few things as frustrating as spending 20 or 30 turns working on constructing a wonder in your most productive city only to have the AI finish it 2-3 turns before you do.

2. CIVILIZATION SELECTION

The decision as to which civilization to play as is an individual one. Traits have various strengths and weaknesses:

Financial: All-time favorite. Once you get cottages and watermills working, this will gain you +1 extra gold for almost every square being worked in your city radius. This is a huge advantage, when combined with appropriately widespread cottage building, allows the player to maintain a high tech rate even with expensive civics, a large army, and a large empire. Nonetheless, these benefits are not experienced until you have developed a certain city infrastructure and developed your terrain, usually in the classical or late ancient era.

Organized: The recent patch has done much to enhance the value of the organized trait. Many civics have become significantly more expensive. I find that civic costs now typically cost 33-66% of city maintenance costs depending on civic settings, averaging about 50% for me. In the late game, after a player changes to state property civic to eliminate distance maintenance costs, civic costs are often double city maintenance costs. Because of inflation that increases in the late game, the costs are often even more than they appear. Organized offers a huge benefit by reducing these costs in half. Organized is especially useful because the player receives its benefits throughout the entire game without any effort or development, and the significant savings are always welcome. This can easily add at least 10% if not 20% to the tech rate. Cheap courthouses help you to reduce expenses even further.

Philosophical: +100% GP. Synergistic with the religious civics (Pacifism - +100% GP rate) and the national epic (+100% GP in the city of your choice), as well as mercantilism, national epic, statue of liberty, etc. Optimal utilization of the philosophical trait requires a heavy wonder-building play style. The high costs of wonder construction consume the resources of your most productive cities that could otherwise be devoted to conquest or expansion. This is therefore not an ideal trait for warmongers. On harder difficulty levels, philosophical may be less useful than on noble, as it will be difficult to utilize the benefits unless you are able to win the wonder race. The philosophical trait received a substantial, although indirect, bonus from the patch, as wonders continue to give GP points even after they expire. If you have philosophical trait, you will get twice the points from your expired wonders as non-philosophicals.

After playing with the philosophical trait extensively, I have found it to be much less useful than I initially believed. Unfortunately, double the GP points does not mean double the number of GPs. A point of diminishing returns is encountered with each GP costing more and more points (5 GPs = 1,500 points, 10 GPs = 5,500 points, 15 GPs = 12,000 points, 20 GPs = 21,000 points, 25 GPs = 32,500 points, 30 GPs = 46,500 points, 35 GPs = 62,000 points, 40 GPs = 82,000 points). I find that it is still possible for a non-philosophical civ to do quite well in the GP race, because there are many ways for non-philosophicals to enhance GP generation making the advantage of the philosophical nation even more tenuous (national wonder, Parthenon, statue of liberty, pacifism, mercantilism). Philosophical is definitely a fun trait, but I think that stronger traits are available.

Expansive: +3 health per city in the patch. With the exception of cities located in flood plains, happiness is initially more limiting for city growth than health at almost all levels, but as the game progresses, numerous wonders, civics, buildings, etc. increase happiness, but there are relatively few ways to increase city health. Cheap granaries are one of the most useful building bonuses and offer early and predictable benefits across all difficulty levels. Expansive is useful only at specific times during gameplay, namely, when your city growth is limited by health, or while building granaries. As these are relatively narrow circumstances (although very important ones), I tend to prefer traits that offer more consistent benefit. If you find you continue to run into problems with city health, pick expansive. However, many of these issues can be remedied with good city placement, resource development, and construction of appropriate buildings.

Industrious: A nice trait, as the wonders you get with +50% build speed can duplicate many other civ traits. Half-price forges are great also because they increase your productivity, and for non-industrious civs they are quite expensive. However, the ability of any player to quickly build wonders by "chop-rushing" (described later) undermines some of the value of the industrial trait. Considering philosophical vs. industrious? Industrious makes it easier to get wonders, while philosophical makes the ones that you have more valuable. Industrious is particularly useful on higher difficulty levels when the player needs a more compelling edge in order to have any real chance of beating the AI to wonders.

Aggressive: A great trait for the warmonger. While experience can be given by buildings, civics, and wonders, a free extra promotion for melee and gunpowder units is great -- especially for barracks-trained units with a couple of levels to boot. More and more experience is required to get more bonuses (2/5/10/17/etc), and so having a free promotion that doesn't set you back at all in the XP quest is good. Since the promotions become more and more powerful the higher in level you go (+20% city attack, +25%, +30% with an extra +10% vs gunpowder units, etc...cumulative!!!), having an extra promotion can result in a huge amount of extra military power, especially if you have planned well to take advantage of other sources of experience. If you want an early domination or conquest victory, aggressive is an excellent choice. Aggressive provides no bonuses to many key unit types: archery, cavalry, tanks, aircraft, and ships, and so the aggressive trait requires an early attack style to flourish.

Spiritual: One of the weakest traits IMO. No anarchy, while nice, is of little benefit as I only change civics 5-6 times in a game (I try to change 2 or 3 at a time at times when several important civics are discovered in close time proximity). Cheap temples? Temples are cheap anyway and have fewer benefits than many other buildings.

Creative: +2 culture has significant benefits in the early game, but few in the late game when cities have more culture than they know what to do with. How many times have I conquered a city only to have it flip to a closely adjacent neighbor? How many times have I built cultural improvement (theater, library, etc.) in a conquered city for the exclusive purpose of generating culture (and, sometimes failed), when a creative civ would not have had to worry at all? The automatic expanding cultural radius can be very valuable in expanding in the early game and blocking off large amounts of territory for your later development. While cultural's benefits are mainly in the early game, the benefits can be substantial. I prefer to get industrious instead and build Stonehenge for your early culture (although this expires -- soon -- with calender), the benefit of creative is still significant.

In sum, I think that spiritual and creative are the two weak traits of CIV. The other six traits are all good in the appropriate situation, with financial and organized representing excellent traits with wide utility across many playing styles, and the others offering specific benefits that require specific playing styles to shine.

My favorite leader for a standard (noble) game is Washington (American) – Financial/Organized. Other great leaders include English (Victoria) – Expansive/Financial, English (Elizabeth) - Philosophical/Financial, Chinese (Qin Shi Huang) - Industrious/Financial, Peter (Russia) - Expansive/Philosophical. If you are playing on a higher difficulty level, traits that offer immediate, consistent benefit like expansive, aggressive, and industrious may serve you better than traits that bloom only with cultivation like financial or philosophical.

3. LEVERAGE YOUR STRENGTHS

It's important to make the most out of your advantages by drawing upon the synergy of civ traits, civics, improvements, and buildings and wonders. For example, it would be silly to get the aggressive civ trait and fail to build barracks. Synergy can be very powerful when you combine substantial bonuses in the same area from multiple different sources. Aggressive (free combat I promotion for melee and gunpowder units)+ barracks (+4 experience for all new units)+ pentagon (+2 experience to all units civ-wide) + theocracy (+2 experience for all new units), police state (+25% military production speed), + West Point (+4 experience for all new units) and Heroic Epic (+100% military production speed) = +125% military production speed pumping out units starting with 12 experience points (3 promotions) in addition to combat I in the city with West Point/Heroic epic, and 8 experience points + combat I at a 25% bonus production speed in all other cities with barracks. An initially mediocre unit with 3 city attack promotions (+20%, +25%, +30%) receives a +85% bonus against cities – a massive boost against even strong defenders of technological parity. Philosophical + Pacifism + Parthenon = 250% great people points, with 350% in the city with the national epic. And so forth.

It is also important to try to compensate for your disadvantages. For example, if I am not playing an expansive civ (or even if I am), I try to build cities on rivers as much as possible for the +2 health bonus, even at a slight productivity hit.

4. RELIGIONS

As in the real world, religion can be one of the most uniting or dividing things in CIV. While gifts or insults have only minor benefit on relations (+/-1, rarely more than +/-2; religion can have a huge impact on relations -- seeing +/-4, +/-6 from religion are common. Religion is by far the biggest factor in relations in most games. It seems to be something in the range of +1 relations for every city of your religion in your opponent's land, +1 or 2 if your religion is their state religion. Therefore, pumping out missionaries to convert your neighbors in the good times is as important for the security of your empire as maintaining a powerful military. I try to keep one city pumping out missionaries of your religion the entire game, providing both relationship and economic bonuses.

Consider getting an early religion (Hinduism or Judaism) or, if going for a chop-rush settler push, one or more of the later ones (Confucianism, Christianity, Taoism, Islam). In any case, try to pick up as many of the later ones as I can in order to keep friends friendly. A friendly neighbor who has previously converted to your religion but subsequently discovers Islam can suddenly decide that you are a pagan who must be cleansed from the earth. Besides, some of the religion techs (like Divine Right, Islam) offer cool wonders.

Founding cities of religion can become real cash cows in the mid and late game, IF you build the religion-specific wonder in the founding city. In a recent game where I aggressively spread Confucianism, over 30-40 cities were converted by the late of the game. I also discovered Taoism and subsequently captured the founding cities of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism, giving me five of the seven world religions. Did I ignore my non-state religions, even though I planned to stick with Confucianism throughout the entire game? Of course not. I sent a great prophet to each city to build the religion-specific wonder. This accomplishes two purposes. First, it gives you free bonus income equal to the number of cities with that religion each turn. Second, it causes the autonomous spread of each religion from its founding city without even requiring missionaries. While I continue to aggressively spread my state religion with missionaries, the other religious capitals function as cash cows with progressively increasing revenue without requiring any other input or management.

Since founding religious cities generate a large amount of income, *regardless of the position of your financial sliders*, these are the best cities for building banks, markets, and grocers. I find that the Wall Street wonder is typically best built in the founding city of my state religion for an extra and substantial economic boost, since this will typically be the largest religion by the mid to late game (and thus the largest city economy).

As previously mentioned, I keep pumping missionaries out from 2-3 cities almost continuously through the entire game. This improves relations with neighbors, creates LOS (line of sight) to other cities, and generates money.

The financial and diplomatic benefits of missionaries are well-known, although the espionage benefits are rarely mentioned. When I am contemplating war with a nation, I will send a wave of missionaries to as many of their key cities as possible before my military units cross the border. This accomplishes two things. First, it provides invaluable intelligence information and allows one to assess which cities represent priority acquisitions as well as to get some idea of the strength, location, and composition of enemy armies. Equally importantly, missionaries of your state religion provide an instant cultural benefit to captured cities. After conquering a city that is not your state religion, you might contemplate building a library or theater -- which could take 50+ turns -- in order to expand the borders and to prevent the city from flipping back to an adjacent neighbor with strong cultural boundaries. However, if the city is already your state religion, it will automatically generate +1 culture/turn in addition to a +1 happiness benefit, expanding your borders within 10 turns and making your city much less likely to flip or revolt. The pre-attack missionary wave essentially adds the benefits of the creative trait to non-creative civs, in addition to income, happiness, and espionage benefits.

5. CITY PLACEMENT

The placement of cities is always one of the most important strategic decisions. I will gladly place a city at significantly further distance from my capital if it results in acquiring special resources or monopolizing a location that is of prime strategic or production value. Many specialty resources offer benefits for your entire civilization, and so the race to control luxury, health, strategic, and bonus resources is a key factor in city placement. Whenever possible, I build cities on rivers, and try to get at least one special resource (of any kind) within range. Of course this is not always possible (especially on unusual or specialty map types), but if you repeatedly find that you are having trouble making your cities happy and productive or are failing to acquire important resources, perhaps it is time to reevaluate your city placement. Controlling strategic passes or "choke points" with cities is also valuable -- if you can block off your enemies from chunks of unsettled land and then fill it in later, that is a bonus, although the geography doesn't always accommodate this.

Buildings

Some buildings I like to build everywhere, whereas others I build only in specialized cities, or in any city when there is a natural opening. Buildings I like to build as much as possible include:

First Tier
granary
lighthouse (for coastal cities)
library
aqueduct
forge

Second Tier
harbor (if applicable)
temple
theater
market
grocery
university
laboratory
factory

The build order of course varies depending on the needs of each city, but generally I get granaries and forges as early as possible everywhere, and theaters first in conquered cities (to prevent culture flipping), and others as the situation dictates. It is hard to go wrong with a library almost everywhere because of the commerce bonus and the culture to expand your borders.

Be careful with buildings that harm city health. In particular, avoid building coal plants, as this subtracts two health and seemingly cannot be removed, even if the city develops alternative power sources. The three gorges dam wonder provides power to all cities on the continent, and cities along rivers can use hydro power. While laboratories increase research by +25%, they also detract from health (-1), and you may not need laboratories everywhere at the very late stage in the game at which they become available – constructing them in a few top research cities may suffice.

Commerce, Research, and Gold

Squares with or without improvements produce *commerce*. This commerce can then be used to fund research, culture, or turned into gold. Improvements (towns etc) and the financial trait actually give you commerce, not gold. The distinction between “commerce” generally and “gold” specifically is somewhat confusing as they sometimes use the same gold coin icon.

Then the benefit of city improvements depends on both your base commerce and your sliders. Say you have a small city producing 10 commerce, and your research slider is on 80%, with 20% going into finances. A library (+25% research) will give you an extra 2 beakers (base research = 80% of 10 = 8, 25% of 8 = 2 more). A grocer, however (+25% gold) would seem not to have any benefit to an economy this small (base gold = 20% of 10 = 2, and 25% of 2= 0.5, rounded down to zero).

Now of course there is some gold *outside* of the commerce system: namely, gold generated by religious buildings. Specialist gold goes directly to finances and is not general "commerce" that can be converted to research.

In other words, the benefit of the improvements depends highly on the position of your sliders. If you played with research on 20% and money on 80%, obviously the financial improvements (market, grocer, bank, etc) would be more valuable. Since in most games however research plays such an important role, science improvements tend to offer greater benefits.

Inflation

Inflation is not covered anywhere in the civilopedia or manual that I can find, but it is an important expense. Inflation can go up but never seems to go down over the course of a game. Inflation increases over time at a steady rate, regardless of spending breakdown. Inflation cannot apparently be controlled; it inevitably increases as the game progresses.

Inflation adds an additional percentage to your expenses, including:
civic upkeep
city maintenance (distance and city number)

This percentage can get quite high. If your expenses are 100 per turn and your inflation is 30%, your final cost is 130 gold. The organized trait has at least some advantage here, because it is saving "pre-tax" rather than "post-tax" dollars. In other words, if your civic upkeep were 50 and inflation were 0%, the organized trait would save only 25 gold (50% of final upkeep), but if inflation were 40%, your real savings are 50+20 (40% of 50) = 70/2, or 35 gold.

6. CIVICS GUIDE

I try to change civics as little as possible since I don't play as Spiritual. I will do 2 or 3 switches at once, when possible. If you do too many changes at once (4 or occasionally 3), it can result in 2 turns anarchy. You cannot change state religion and civics on the same turn.

Government Civics

Hereditary Rule: (medium upkeep, + 1 happiness per military unit in a city, req. monarchy). Since most cities will have at least one military unit for defense, this tech can be a real benefit in the early middle ages when you are still developing your luxury resource network and constructing happiness buildings. Hereditary rule provides a great answer to happiness problems that can otherwise be limiting to a rapidly-growing civilization.

Representation: (medium upkeep, +3 research per specialist, +2 happiness in 6 largest cities, req. constitution). Another excellent bonus, especially for a philosophical nation with many specialists. The largest cities are the most likely to get unhappy, so this civic gives you the happiness bonus where you need it. Representation is particularly valuable for philosophical civs in synergy with mercantilism and the statue of liberty wonder, harnessing the free specialists to provide a major technology boost. Unless you have a vast number of towns, representation is a good civic to keep throughout the entire game. The extra research for every specialist continues to be a huge benefit that can significantly speed your research. I try to build the pyramids as quick as I can so that I can switch to representation, significantly speeding research. Then pick up wonders and buildings that give you (or allow) specialists: great library, forge, statue of liberty, etc.

Police State: (high upkeep, +25% military production, -50% war weariness, req. facism) is great for the warmonger or for wartime defense, but the high cost makes it undesirable in peacetime.

Universal Suffrage: moderate upkeep. The +1 production boost to towns and ability to complete production with gold (units/buildings, not wonders) is useful; however, it is of little use in the early and mid game when cottages have not yet developed into towns. Don't get snookered into getting this in the early game with the pyramids, as upkeep is high and you will have no towns to provide the productivity bonus. Weighing universal suffrage against

Legal Civics:

Vassalage: high upkeep, +2 experience per unit, lower unit support costs: a good tech for a warmonger, but the high cost makes it prohibitive for others. Consider this temporarily while in a war.

Bureaucracy: (+50% production/gold in capital, medium upkeep, req. civil service). Good in the early game, and provides an excellent boost for a wonder-building city. Liberalism is close enough around the corner from civil service that often I hold off for free speech. As the slider is usually set heavily to research, the primary benefit of this civic is usually production rather than gold.

Nationhood: no upkeep (changed from low to no upkeep with the patch), can draft 3 units per turn, barracks +2 happiness. Also a good civic for a warmonger that is better sustainable long-term than vassalage because of its low cost, in addition to adding happiness benefit.

Free Speech: (no upkeep, +2 gold from towns, +100% culture per city, req. liberalism). It is my favorite for the late game, but won't do you much good if you don't have towns. I like to get bureaucracy for the production boost while towns are developing, and then switch to free speech once I have enough towns to justify it. At no upkeep cost, the price is right, and this one can provide a great boost to your economy.

Labor Civics

Slavery: (low upkeep, can sacrifice population to finish production, req. bronze working) Excellent for rapidly-growing cities limited by happiness, although it makes 1 pop unhappy for 10 turns. Slavery is ideal for civs with large cities with abundant food (flood plains + farms) but marginal productivity and limited happiness, especially in the early and mid-game. Slavery takes the revolting pops that are adding nothing to the economy and uses them to produce wonders or other high-cost buildings that would otherwise take many turns to complete. I typically keep this civic until I get emancipation with democracy.

Serfdom: (low upkeep) -- workers build improvements faster. I usually have a large enough army of workers building improvements and clearing jungles that this one isn't as attractive as the others.

Caste System: (medium upkeep, req. code of laws) -- unlimited scientists, artists, merchants in cities. A reasonable choice if you have food to spare, don't yet have enough town improvements to allow specialists otherwise, and can afford the upkeep. While I like the idea of the caste system civic for philosophical civs, the way which this is implemented is poor. Once you get caste system, the computer automatically allocates many of your workers to specialists, especially scientists. Although this can be somewhat controlled with your city production settings, the AI often diverts workers producing food, hammers, and commerce into specialists producing only science and culture. This slows both the production and growth of many of your cities. There is too much micromanagement involved to manage the caste system appropriately, and the stunting of your production and growth because of poorly allocated specialists is rarely if ever worthwhile, even for a philosophical civ. Skip it and go for emancipation. The scientists are the most valuable, while artists and merchants are usually of limited value.

Emancipation: (no upkeep, req. democracy) is great for mid to late game. It doubles rate of cottages -> towns; a big synergistic economic boost when combined with appropriate techs, free speech, and universal suffrage.

Economic Civics:

Mercantilism: (medium upkeep, 1 free specialist per city, no foreign trade routes, req. banking). Getting this civic is like having the statue of liberty wonder and is a huge boost for philosophical or GP oriented civs. It is moderately expensive, and shuts down foreign trade (which can also hurt, or at least won't help, your relations). However, if you have the Angkor Wat wonder that adds to priest productivity and the Representation civic that adds 3 research to every specialist, this presents a huge boost to your cities that more than compensates for the lack of foreign trade routes.

Free Market: (medium upkeep) - +1 trade route per city. A nice financial or research boost, although only modest in size. However I rarely use this as state property is only a few techs away.

Edit: The patch increases free trade from low to medium upkeep. More reason to skip it.

State Property: (low upkeep, req. communism) is great (no distance maintenance costs, +1 food from watermills). Although the patch increased the upkeep from free to low, it is still extremely useful. I find that with my tendency to build many cities, it saves me as much or more than I would earn from the extra trade route, plus upkeep is free, plus you get extra food. As I tend to build watermills along almost all river tiles because of their boost to productivity (+2 with appropriate techs), food (+1), and economy, a river city may be able to support a couple more citizens that can be made specialists to boost your GP generation. My most-used economic tech.

State property eliminates the city distance maintenance cost entirely, which for a large empire typically represents about 50% of your total city upkeep (this rough rule of thumb varies depending on both the number of cities and the distances involved). This can be quite a substantial savings. For a nation with a well-developed state religion, adopting state property frequently allows one to move the tech slider from 70-80% to 90-100%. This faster tech speed has many benefits: quicker availability of new buildings and units, faster tech bonuses, and getting sooner to techs like electricity that increase the value or productivity of your existing city improvements. The extra food can allow you to support extra specialists or larger city growth if you have many river cities and have built watermills. With no civic upkeep cost, the price is right. In most games, the state property civic alone is far better in terms of your financial bottom line than the organized trait, as city distance upkeep costs often well exceed 50% of the civic upkeep costs discounted by organized. My tests suggest that the Versailles wonder, like the Forbidden Palace, reduce only distance upkeep costs (Versailles seems to be like a second Forbidden Palace). If you are using the state property civic and plan to stick with it long-term, don't waste city production on these wonders. Forbidden Palace and Versailles offer only a modest location-dependent decrease in distance costs, while state property abolishes distance costs altogether. With city upkeep virtually cut in half by state property, you will also find less of a necessity for courthouses until your civilization is extremely large.

Environmentalism: (high upkeep) is nice at the very end of the game when you get ecology (+6 health, +1 happiness from forests and jungles). Unfortunately I've harvested most forests and jungles long before the ecology tech comes around (and jungles are so unproductive why would you want to keep them), and find that my cities already have good health and happiness well before then and are more limited by food. The expensive upkeep is also a drawback, so I tend to use state property more frequently. Rather than getting environmentalism, I prefer to research future techs (+1 health and happiness each for your entire civ), since ecology is already near the end of the tech line), rather than paying the fat environmentalism upkeep fees. At least that part of environmentalism is realistic.

Religious Civics:

Organized Religion: (high upkeep, +25% building and wonder construction, req. monotheism). After extensive testing, I have come to the conclusion that this is the best religion civic, at least for my play style. I grab this civic as soon as I can get to monotheism and keep it throughout the entire game. I have verified in-game that organized religion does boost wonder speed as well as that of non-wonder buildings. +25% building and wonder speed throughout the whole game is essentially equivalent to a free forge in every city, except that the bonus does not apply to unit builds. This trait is very expensive for a large civilization, but I think it is well worth the cost. I can think of no wonder, civ trait, building, or civic that matches organized religion in its sweeping benefits.

Theocracy: (medium upkeep), +2 experience points for units created in cities with state religion, no non-state religion spread) -- okay for a warmonger, but expensive.

Pacifism: (no upkeep, +100% GP, req. philosophy) is phenomenal as it can essentially bestow the philosophical trait on a non-philosophical civ, or make philosophical civs even better. The low upkeep is counterbalanced by the +1 gold per military unit, so this tech can be cheap or expensive depending on your military size. As attractive as pacifism is, I feel that organized is a better trait, even for philosophical civs. Ask yourself: how many great people would you need to generate to speed construction of buildings and wonders in every one of your cities by 25%?

Free Religion: (low upkeep): I never get free religion as losing all the state religion bonuses really hurts, as well as losing line of site to all converted cities in other nations. At end-game usually I have plenty of luxuries and am not so desperate for a few more happy faces that I would want to deal with the hassle of having to get 4 or 5 religions in each of my cities to make this civic worthwhile. The +10% tech bonus -- while meaningful -- doesn't seem to make much of a difference for me this late in the game, plus you have to pay fixed upkeep (albeit low) to boot. Some players attempt to get free religion as soon as possible to pacify aggressive neighbors with different religions. However, I have had war declared on me so many times in the early game when I had no state religion at all that I know that simply removing state religion is no panacea to diplomacy. Dropping a state religion can pacify opponents, but it can also make former close allies lukewarm or even hostile. And if you are still deeply afraid of your neighbors by the late time of game that organized religion becomes available, perhaps it is time to assess your strategy in other areas. Theology civics include some of the best benefits in the game (+100% GP from pacifism, +25% building and wonder construction speed), and I generally like these bonuses far too much to sacrifice them for free religion, which seems to offer little in return. Nevertheless, if you are in a situation where you are walking on eggshells -- playing deity level with far more powerful AI players, perhaps -- free religion may be something to consider. Otherwise, skip it.

Favored early game civics: representation (constitution – or pyramids), bureaucracy (civil service), slavery (bronze working), mercantilism (banking), organized religion (monotheism)
Favored late game civics: universal suffrage, free speech, emancipation, state property, organized religion

Warmonger civics: police state, vassalage, slavery, state property, theocracy

7. CITY IMPROVEMENTS

I tend to manually control workers (at least until very late in the game) as the computer automation leaves much to be desired and lacks strategic foresight.

Farms: +1 food initially, +2 food (total) at end-game when you have biology. Recent tests have led me to change my strategies and begin building large numbers of farms initially in order to quickly increase city size. When cities are near the max of their happiness and/or health, then I start converting the farms to cottages for the economic benefits. In contrast to watermills and windmills which offer economic and production bonuses in addition to food, farms offer only food. The advantage is that they are available almost immediately in the game with the agriculture tech. I prefer wide proliferation of farms in the ancient era, with removal of some farms and transition to cottages and watermills when you are near the maximum sustainable city size for health and happiness. Especially on higher difficulty levels, spamming too many farms may quickly bring your cities over the happiness and/or healthiness levels they can support, resulting in revolters and no "we love the king day" events. Automated workers tend to overdo farming and so I prefer to direct workers manually. Use farms wisely, but be careful that they don't push your cities into unhappiness or unhealthiness. You may need to expand your growth capacity as your city’s happiness and health limits increase, so keep an eye on this.

Cottages: Cottages make up the foundation of economic and research productivity of your civilization. Especially if you have the financial trait, cottages produce great bonuses when they grow into towns, with full techs and civics: commerce +7, production +1 (requires universal suffrage civic). Cottages can be built anywhere, but their production bonus comes late (after full growth into towns) and only with the correct civic.

I often wait until cities are close to their health or happiness limit to start building large numbers of cottages because farms offer more immediate benefit by increasing city size and therefore production and the number of workable tiles. Cottages only progress into hamlets, villages, and towns when they are being worked. There is no point in rushing to place cottages on all 20 workable tiles of a level 2 city (for an extreme example), as the cottages will not begin to develop at all until the city is large enough to work them. My tests and those of others have demonstrated that in most cases, a better long-term economic outcome is achieved with early farms to grow your city quickly and then building large numbers of cottages that the city is able to work, as opposed to immediate cottage spamming resulting in slow growth and many unworked tiles in an immature city.
The downsides of cottages include that they take a long time to grow: cottage->hamlet 10 turns, hamlet ->village 20 turns, village ->town 40 turns. This can be cut in half with appropriate civics, but still it takes 35 turns in the best possible case to grow from a cottage to a town. In a game that lasts only 400 or 500 turns (and may be decided long before then), that is a big chunk of game time. Also, cottages can be easily pillaged by an enemy. Cottages are particularly valuable around your core research cities, but think twice about building cottages on frontier cities close to aggressive neighbors. In any case, the long maturation time of cottages requires that they be built as early as possible to maximize their benefits. Having cottages that have grown into towns while your neighbors are still dealing with hamlets and villages can prove decisive.

Watermill: An immediate +1 production boost, with final bonuses of +1 food, +2 commerce, and +2 production with full techs and civics (requires state property for the food bonus). These are very helpful in increasing the production of plains, grassland, or flood plains adjacent to rivers that have little innate production capability. And once you have the correct techs/civics, the bonuses are immediate and do not require the maturation that cottages do. You can only build watermills on one square or the other to the side of a river, but I build watermills everywhere I can, typically replacing farms as soon as state property is in hand.

Windmill: An immediate +1 food, with final bonuses of +1 food, +2 commerce, and +1 production with full tech (replaceable parts, electricity). Very useful if you need more food, have limited river access, and want something that offers more substantial and well-rounded benefits than farms. Windmills can be placed on hills which makes a nice alternative to mines, giving production and commerce benefits while allowing the square to provide at least some of the food supply required to work it. With the financial trait, windmill offers +1 food, +1 production, and +3 commerce, making a windmill often preferable to a mine.

Lumbermill: Chopping down the trees doesn't add any more food production (unlike C3C), and so lumbermills are a prime consideration for productivity in the late game. That is, in areas where you still have trees. With max +3 production (Base +1 from trees, +1 from lumbermill, +1 more when railroad comes around) and +1 commerce for squares adjacent to rivers, lumbermills are the best late-game productivity improvement. They don't have the economic benefits of cottages, watermills, or windmills, but offer a more substantial production boost without sapping your food supply (unlike workshops) or without requiring a specific civic to keep from doing so. The late benefits of a lumbermill must also be weighed against the benefits of chopping in the early game for benefits that can be quite substantial at a time when your civilization's productivity is very low: chopped trees can result in a much faster start, extra cities, or more wonders. I chop trees in the early game for chop-rushing settlers or crucial wonders, but by the mid-game when instant productivity is no longer urgent, I prefer to preserve any remaining trees for future lumbermills.

Mine: +2 production, +1 more (+3 total) with railroad. A substantial productivity boost as long as you have enough food to go around. The option between windmills and mines is nice for hill squares.

Workshop: +1 production, -1 food. With max upgrades they can offer up to +3 production, and with state property, no food penalty. This allows the same +3 production as lumbermill, without requiring you to keep trees around until the late game. The food penalty early on makes this a poor choice in the early middle ages, but once you have state property, workshops represent an excellent improvement for production. However, if you depend on workshops and state property, you will largely be obliged to stay with that civic through the rest of the game -- or see your cities starve when you change, unless you have a large food surplus from other sources.

8. SPECIALIZATION

Since you can only build 2 national wonders in a city and because GP points accrue according to specialties, it makes sense to have specialized cities in CIV. I aim for a science city (oxford university + great library), a military city (pentagon + heroic epic + west point), a culture city (hermitage + globe theater), an economic city (wall street), and will put the national epic in the city with the most wonders (and most GP points).

In general, keeping a flow of military units from at least one city will keep your cities happy (large cities get upset without protection) and defended. I also try to keep one city pumping out missionaries throughout almost the entire game, occasionally switching production to another city to construct buildings in the city. In my first couple games when I did not continue to produce both military and missionary units in peace time and war time, it caused major problems for me in spite of large leads in other areas.

CIV rewards the creation of specialized cities. I try to create at least 2 cities of each specialty because of the need to build infrastructure buildings in between building military or religious units, wonders, etc. Specialist cities make sense because you can't build every building in every city, and specialization helps you to leverage your city placement by putting buildings in the cities where they will do the most good.

The first step in deciding the division of labor between specialized cities is to evaluate the surrounding land. A city in an area with luxury resources could be a great trade/science city, while one in an area with many mines and high production would likely make a good military city for creating units, or for rapidly building wonders. A city with abundant food supply would make a good specialist city to increase great people generation.

Military City

Build in: productive area with high hammer yield (mines, watermills, etc)
Buildings:
Barracks Forge Factory
Power source (coal, hydro, nuclear), Granary Aqueduct
National wonders:
first city: Heroic Epic (+100% military production in city), West Point (+4 exp/military unit)
second city: Red Cross (free Medic I promotion), Ironworks (near iron or coal) -- consider designating this one a military city from the time iron appears on the map.
World Wonders:
Pentagon (+2 experience for units trained in any city, can be built anywhere)

Discussion: You will need many military units during the game, so why build them from just anywhere when you can build them quickly in a specialized city and get free experience points to boot?

Science City

Build in: area with abundant commerce
Improvements: focus on cottages ->towns
Buildings:
Academy (+50% research, requires great scientist) Library (+25% research)
Observatory (+25% research) University (+25% research)
Laboratory (+25% research)
Monastery (+10% research, but becomes obsolete - may skip this one)
National wonders:
Oxford University (+100% research)
World Wonders:
Great Library (+2 scientists, expires)

Merchant City

Build in: area with abundant commerce
Improvements: focus on cottages ->towns
Buildings:
Market (+25% gold) Grocer (+25% gold)
Bank (+50% gold) Airport (+1 trade route)
National Wonders:
Wall Street (+100% gold)
GP Focus: great merchant

Culture City

Consider combining with science city as many science improvements also generate culture. I don't generally build a culture-only city for that reason, I go for culture/science. But here are the culture listings for those interested in culture victory, not including science improvements.

Buildings:
Temple (+1 culture) Monastery (+2 culture)
Cathedral or equivalent (+50% culture) Theater (+3 culture)
Broadcast tower (+50% culture)
National Wonders:
Hermitage (+100% culture) Globe theater (+6 culture)
World Wonders:
Hollywood (+50% culture) Rock n' Roll (+50% culture)
Broadway (+50% culture) Sistine chapel (+2 culture per specialist in all cities)

If going for a culture victory, consider balancing your national and world culture wonders between 3 cities to allow each to achieve legendary culture.

Great People City

Obviously this one should be combined with another city of your choice, as the world and national wonders built in other cities contribute GP points. I like to make my GP city one that focuses on GP types that I find to be the most valuable (great engineers -- can rush wonders, or perhaps scientists -- can create academy, rather than prophets, artists, or merchants)

National wonder: National Epic (+100% GP birth rate in city)
World Wonders:
Parthenon (+50% GP birth rate in all cities) Great Library (+2 scientists in city, but expires)
Statue of Liberty (+1 specialist in all cities)
Synergistic Civic: pacifism (+100% GP rate, no upkeep)

9. WONDERS

When beginning every game, you will want to consider what wonders are a priority for you and what wonders you will pass on. It is rarely possible to get every wonder. Realistic decisions must be made and tech paths to get the desired wonders early must be considered. There is little as frustrating as coming within a few turns of completing an expensive wonder only to lose your effort because another civ beat you to it.

Wonder decisions can make or break the game. A few key wonders can provide advantages turning the tide in your favor, while an inappropriate focus on wonders at the expense of defense or growth can leave your civilization vulnerable.

The player should also consider what role wonders will play in the overall strategy. If you are playing as a philosophical or industrious nation, constructing numerous wonders should be a centerpiece of your strategy. For militaristic players, wonders should play little role, as a vast army can be constructed in the time of constructing just a few wonders. The militaristic player should therefore aim for a few targeted wonders, while the philosophical or industrious player should strive for a much longer list.

Some wonders offer considerable early benefits, but expire. Others offer mediocre benefits that expire regardless (the Hagia Sophia is infamous for frequently becoming obsolete only shortly after it is constructed). Wonders expire when YOU get the expiring tech, not when your neighbors do. So I often hold off on trading for the calender tech until all my cities have experienced border expansion from Stonehenge, and avoid getting chemistry until the last possible moment to milk the Parthenon for every great person point possible. Still others offer great game-long benefits.

Unless you are going for a culture victory, great artists are the least useful of all of the great people (+3 commerce, +14 culture). Therefore, I try to keep wonders offering great artist points out of my principal wonder city to avoid generating less-useful great people there. Great scientists are perhaps the most useful for their ability to add an academy in one city each. Great engineers (+3 hammers) and great prophets (+2 hammer) are the most useful as they add productivity. Great merchants add food, although only +1, in addition to commerce.

To maximize the conversion of great people points into great people, it is best to concentrate as many wonders as possible in one, two, or three designated wonder-building cities. The decision of how many cities to designate as primary or secondary wonder-builders will depend on your playing style.

Here is a list of wonders that I make priorities, keeping in mind that the wonders different players favor will vary widely depending on their play style and tactics.

Priority Expiring Wonders

Stonehenge: obelisk, +1 culture in every city, expires @ Calendar.

Great Library: +2 scientists is a big deal at a time when many of your cities can't dedicate the pop to specialists, especially if you build this in your great people focus city. Perhaps most importantly, the +6 GP points/turn from 2 scientists in addition to the +2 GP from the wonder (total 8 GP points/turn) can help you quickly to get great scientists who can found academies in your largest cities, especially in the presence of philosophical/pacifist /Parthenon /national epic synergisms. Getting the great library with several great scientists can therefore generate a massive bonus that will speed your research throughout the entire remainder of the game, long after the GL’s primary effects have expired. After the GL, the oxford university is the only good generator of great scientist points until after the middle ages.

Parthenon: +50% GP birth rate in all cities. Vital for philosophical civs, but unfortunately doesn't last forever.

Non-Expiring Wonders

Hanging Gardens: +1 pop, +1 health in all cities. This is a huge early wonder that can catapult your civ ahead, especially if you have many small or modest-sized cities. Adding an extra pop and health point to every city boosts your economy, your research, your productivity, etc.

Notre Dame: +1 happiness for all cities on continent

Versailles: reduces maintenance in nearby cities

Statue of Liberty: a free specialist in every city. Fabulous for philosophical civs. Probably my # 1 wonder in the game.

Pentagon: +2 experience points for units trained in all cities

Three Gorges Dam: power for all cities on continent located near a river

Eiffel Tower: (free broadcast tower in every city) gives a big culture boost

Wonders by GP type

(all world wonders +2 GP points, all national wonders +1)

Great Scientist:
Great Library (marble) (+2 scientists)
Oxford University (stone) (+100% research, 3 citizens as scientists)
Space Elevator
Red Cross
Scotland Yard

Capital: Stonehenge, pyramids, hanging gardens, great library, ironworks (?)
Wonder city 2: parthenon, notre dame, national epic
Military city

Great Prophet:
Stonehenge (stone): obelisk in each city
Angkor Wat (stone): +1 production from priests in all cities, allows 3 priests. This makes priest specialists (up to +2 hammers, +1 gold) the most productive specialists, beating out engineers (+2 hammers, no other bonuses) -- until the wonder expires
Oracle (marble) (1 free tech)
Chichen Itza (stone): +25% defense in all cities
Spiral minaret (stone). +1 gold from all state religion buildings. Nice, although a relatively small bonus.
Religious holy wonder: minus 1 production, spreads religion, 1 gold from each, allows 3 priests

Great Engineer:
Hanging gardens (stone) (+1 population, +1 health in all cities)
Pentagon (+2 experience to military units in all cities)
Three Gorges Dam
Ironworks (allows 3 citizens as engineers)
West Point (stone) (+4 experience per unit)
Pyramids (stone) (allows all government civics) – a big boost in the early game
Hagia Sophia (marble) (+50% worker build speed)

Great Merchant:
Colossus (copper) (+1 gold in all city water tiles)
Statue of Liberty (+1 free specialist in all cities on the continent)
Wall Street
Forbidden Palace (acts as a 2nd capital decreasing distance maintenance)
Versailles (marble)
Great Lighthouse (+2 trade routes in coastal cities)
Eiffel Tower (free broadcast tower in every city)
United Nations

Great Artist:
Parthenon (marble) (+50% GP birth rate in all cities)
Notre Dame (+1 happiness in all cities)
National epic (stone) (+100% GP birth rate)
Hollywood (+1 happiness)
Rock n’ Roll (+1 happiness)
Broadway (+1 happiness)
Heroic Epic (marble) (+100% military unit production)
Hermitage (marble)
Globe Theater (no unhappiness in this city, allows 3 artists)
Taj Mahal
Mt. Rushmore (stone)
Kremlin (stone)
Sistine chapel (marble)

Most important early resources:
Stone, marble, iron
Put Parthenon, notre dame, statue of liberty in a separate wonder city
National epic in capital

10. GREAT PEOPLE

In maximizing great people points, you can get some great synergy between traits, civics, wonders, and improvements. If you want a lot of great people, get as many of these as possible.

Note that all bonuses are additive, not multiplicative. For example, 2 100% bonuses on top of a 100% base produce a 300% rate (100% base +100% x2), not 400% (they only add their bonus to the BASE rate, not to the final rate after other adjustments). Also, all fractions in the game are rounded DOWN (i.e. a 25% bonus of 7 is rounded down to 1, a 25% bonus of 8 is necessary for +2)

Traits:
Philosophical trait : +100% GP generation civ-wide
Civics:
labor - caste system: unlimited scientists, merchants, artists in all cities
economy - mercantilism: +1 free specialist per city; or (in games with many rivers) state property for the watermill food bonus, allowing higher POP and thus more specialists
religion - pacifism: +100% GP birth rate in cities with state religion
National wonders:
national epic - +100% GP in city where built (only)
World Wonders:
Parthenon: +50% GP generation civ-wide, expires with chemistry
Statue of Liberty: +1 free specialist in all cities
great library: +2 free scientists in city where built, but expires.

A civ with max upgrades (not including great library) would have:
- a 300% great people rate (100% base + 100% philosophical + 100% pacifism) + 50% from Parthenon (before expires) + 100% more in city with national wonder
- 2 free specialists in all cities (mercantilism statue of liberty). At 300% return on a 3 GP base per specialist x 2 specialists, this would provide 18 GP points *per turn* even in your least developed cities with no wonders.
-unlimited ability to allocate scientists, artists, and merchants in all cities.

Note again that the wonder bonuses expire when YOU get the tech in question, not your neighbors...therefore a philosophical civ with the Parthenon may want to push back getting chemistry as late as possible.

Of course some great people types are more valuable than others. Great engineers allow you to rush wonders which can provide key benefits in a close game. And great scientists can allow you to build an academy (+50% research) in every city. Great merchants, artists, and prophets, while still valuable, have effects that are generally somewhat more modest in terms of long-term game play. Since the chance of getting a great person of different types depends on the wonders and specialists in each city, I like having separate cities focus on great engineers and scientists without mixing with the other types as much as possible (you don't want to have your city with engineering wonders drowned out by large numbers of merchant, artist, or priest specialists pushing the GP probability towards other types). I don't have a strong preference between merchants, artists, and prophets, and so will build wonders generating all 3 in the same city.

Bonuses allowing you to turn citizens into engineers are generated only by:
Forge (allows 1 engineer)
Factory (allows 2 engineers)
Ironworks (allows 3 engineers)

Engineer GP points are generated by:
West Point (+1 GP)
Hanging Gardens (+2)
Pentagon (+2)
Pyramids (+2)
Three Gorges Dam (+2)

The military city is the most natural choice for an engineer GP city (forge + factory + ironworks + west point + pentagon).

---

As the cost for great people increase throughout the game, diminishing returns are eventually reached. Later in the game, the cost of great people goes up and up, while the benefit of great people often declines, since the earlier you get great people, the longer they will benefit your civilization. However, your civilization should also increase in its capacity to generate great people over time, civics are chosen, as wonders are built and citizens are assigned as specialists. With appropriate tactics, many great people can still be generated even in the late game.

Every great person can cause either an instant benefit, provide a tech bonus, or add a long-term bonus to cities. The benefits must be carefully considered. In *most* cases, I prefer to use great people in a manner that augments the long-term productivity of my cities, although there are exceptional cases where great people are best used to rush a tech or a wonder.

Two types of great people present no-brainers for their use:

1. Great prophets. Before using great prophets in any other way, make sure that you have created the religion-specific wonder in any founding religious city under your control. If you have made any attempt at all to spread the religion, or of you are conquering the founding city of a religion that is widely accepted, this can produce massive financial benefits that dwarf virtually any other use of great people.
2. Great scientists. Use them to create academies in all of your top science cities. Which would you rather have -- an extra +6 or so science per turn in the city of your choice, or a 50% increase in science in a city that is already generating 50, 75, or 200 beakers per turn? Although the increase acts only on the base number of commerce points applied to research (before other modifiers are applied), a great scientist can result in massive research output for cities, especially in conjunction with other science improvements (library/university/observatory/Oxford University/etc).

For other great people, I usually prefer to join them to a city, with occasional exceptions as previously acknowledged.

Great artists. If you are going for a cultural victory, great artists are your friend. A very nice strategy for cultural victory on Monarch level, using great artists either by joining to a city or as "culture bombs" to titrate legendary culture among three cities is presented by walkerjks here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=138647

If you are not going for a cultural victory, great artists are by far the weakest of all great people. I find that in most cases it is preferable to join great artists to border cities or captured cities instead of invoking the "culture bomb." Great artists produce +12 to +15 culture per turn, which is the equivalent of many cultural buildings (library = +2 culture, theater = +3, etc) and will quickly expand the city's borders -- in addition to any cultural multipliers the city may have (cathedrals, hermitage, civics, etc). In this way, you still continue to receive the commerce benefits of the great artist throughout the game, speeding your research and filling your coffers.

Great merchant. The great merchant is the ONLY great person that offers a food bonus (+1 food, +6 commerce appears typical). I prefer to join great merchants to high-commerce cities that focus on great people creation (the city with the national epic is often a great choice), since more food allows you to allocate more specialists, further increasing great people output.

Great engineers. As for great prophets, the surplus productivity is welcome. These often go in my capital or most productive city or cities. A city with ironworks makes a great choice for great engineer placement in the late game.

OPTIONS FOR EARLY EXPANSION

There are several good early expansion options. The decision as to which is best for you depends both on map choice and on your playing style.

11. CHOP-RUSHING

Chop rushing is a great way to jump ahead in the early game. The first mention I know of was in this thread by AlexFrog:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137292

I prefer a somewhat modified version of the strategy. The strategy involves founding initial cities in areas with a large number of trees within their "fat cross" area. The player researches bronze working immediately while building a worker in the capital city before building any other units or buildings. Once the worker is done (12-15 turns) and bronze working is researched, the worker immediately goes to work chopping trees around the capital. Each tree chopped results in 20 hammers, which can rocket a level 1 city that may have only 1, 2, or 3 hammers far ahead.

The most logical initial use of "chop-rushing" is for settlers and workers, since your cities are normally stagnant (do not grow) while these units are being produced, and because these units are vital to the growth and productivity of your civilization. I save trees to chop-rush settlers, workers, or wonders, since the construction of buildings or military units allows your cities to grow during the production phase, while production of the former two does not, and the third category (wonders) is a race. Chop-rushing typically allows me to plant 2-3 times as many cities as my closest AI competitors on noble level.

Of course, settlers must never be sent out undefended, so I like to first build at least one (possibly two) warriors, sending at least one out to explore and pop goody huts (in addition to the starting warrior) while the second will act as your settler escort. I periodically build warriors during the rapid expansion phase to ensure that my cities and settlers are adequately defended.

Because of maintenance costs increasing with both distance and city number (and I will place cities at long distances from my capital when necessary to secure important resources), it is impractical to build a civilization by the exclusive virtue of chop-rushing. There must be a balance. Once I get three or four cities, I let one or two grow and develop -- building a granary or military units to increase in size and to defend the borders, while the others chop-rush. I also assign some workers to build improvements very early -- cottages in particular, in addition to improvements required by special resources -- in order to ensure that city commerce, on average, is in excess of upkeep costs, allowing continued rapid research and continued growth. As a rough rule of thumb, on noble level, if my research percentage falls below 70%, that is a warning sign to me that I need to better develop the city economic base by building more cottages and letting cities grow to a larger size before expanding.

Chop-rushing can also be a terrific way to get wonders, especially when you have special resources that speed wonder building. For example, Stonehenge costs 120 hammers, but if you have stone, every forest chopped will give double (not 20, but 40) hammers. Therefore, you only need to chop three trees to build Stonehenge in a city with stone -- as opposed to the many turns it would take to build it without chop-rushing. This is a great way to get key wonders as a non-industrious civ, and the ability of any civilization to do this really waters down the value of the industrious trait.

Edit: the patch slightly weakens chop-rushing. Chopping income has dropped from thirty to twenty hammers, with that number being further reduced for chops further from the city (outside the city radius?) Mathematics adds +50% (back to the original 30), but it comes in the end of the first age at a time that is not as useful as an immediate chop-rush would be. Also, unlike Civ3, cutting down trees doesn’t increase food harvest, so you have to immediately place farms or cottages or do something else to develop the land in other ways. Chopping offers a quick up-front bonus but can dent your long-term production if you overdo it. Weigh the pros and cons carefully in each situation.

In a recent test game in which I preserved the forests in the cities (for the health benefits and to maintain the forest productivity), I found that by the mid-middle ages, my tech rate had dropped virtually to zero and my workers began to strike and units were automatically disbanded because expenses were greater than income. Retaining the forests as opposed to chopping and planting cottages widely didn’t provide the economic revenue to support the rapid city expansion that I prefer, even with measured expansion letting many of the cities grow to mid-size. Therefore I continue to favor chopping trees – whether in an early settler rush, or to complete wonders – also to free up the land for farms (faster growth) or cottage improvements (improve economy and tech speed).

EXPANDING YOUR CAPITAL

As attractive as it may seem, chop rushing faces major limitations, especially after being significantly tuned down in the recent patch. Chopping trees can push cities located near flood plains into unhealthiness and decline. Chops offer a one-time boost after which the city returns to its prior production. Depending on your situation, allowing the capital to develop before sending out settlers can be a better option. For example, if you can expand your capital in 8 turns and get a square that offers a combined 3 food and/or hammers, you will get a bonus of +1 food or hammer (2 of the food go to support the expanded population) for every subsequent turn throughout the game. For an average level 1 city with 3 resources in the center square and 3 on the first worked square (4 surplus food/hammers for settlers/workers), it takes 25 turns (4x25=100) to build a 100 resource settler and 15 turns (4x15) to build a 60-resource worker. Just one surplus resource, after paying food costs, by expanding to level 2 will drop this down to 20 turns for the settler (5 resources x 20 turns) and 12 turns for the worker. Expanding to level 3 to work another 3-resource tile, which you can generally do in another 8 turns after the first expansion with good city placement, will give you 6 surplus resources, dropping settler creation time to 17 turns and worker creation down to 10 turns.

Let’s do a comparison of a city that immediately builds 4 settlers, vs. one that spends 16 turns building warriors to grow twice, and switches production to settlers before the 2nd warrior is completed:

Build order: 4 Settlers 1 ½ warriors, 4 settlers
Turns to 1st settler 25 16 (to grow twice), then 17 for settler = 33
2nd settler 50 50
3rd settler 75 67
4th settler 100 84
Final capital size 1 3

As you can see, the city that expands to level 3 first catches up with the city that immediately built only settlers by the time the 2nd settler is completed. The fact that the settler-only city completed its first settler 9 turn earlier does not make up for this, as the 9 turns allow for barely 1 cycle of growth as opposed to the 2 that the first city has achieved.

The expand-first city ends up far ahead because at the end, it is better developed and more productive than the city that pumped out settlers immediately. The expand-first model also has the advantage of producing warriors to defend your units, as unprotected settlers are not likely to survive.

If you are well-situated and can develop those resources further, the model shifts even more in favor of allowing your city to increase in size. For example, if you can irrigate 2 flood plains up to +4 food each in your size 3 city and have one special resource you can get 2 food or hammers from, your total surplus will be 10 (3 from center tile, 2 per tile from 2 floodplains, and 3 from specialty resource) per turn. You can then build settlers in just 10 turns. At that point, you are expanding FASTER than you could with chop-rushing. Between chopping and moving, trees take 3-4 turns to chop for just 20 hammers and are limited, while your expanded city is indefinitely producing a surplus of 10/turn.

In general, most cities in the early game do not require more than 3-4 farm tiles. Exceptions may be made for cities on barren land, such as plains or hills. A few judicious farms are usually all that you need in order to jump-start your growth. If you overdo the farming, you can easily push the city into unhappiness, at which point cottages are a better alternative.

The decision of when to develop your capital vs. when to expand depends on your city setup. If tiles around your city are not very fertile (i.e. plains), you may wish to get out a settler sooner rather than later. If however your main city is well-placed and has one or two special resources within its boundaries that you can access with early techs, it is often wise to spend a few turns developing these resources to create a more productive capital.

12. TECHNOLOGY

Great variability comes in here. Depending on your civilization traits and technologies, your level, and your play style, you may have different technological priorities.

Some players favor chop-rushing for early expansion, going straight for bronze working. Then I go for pottery (to build cottages ASAP) and from there to alphabet (to trade techs). After alphabet, I trade with the AI as much as possible. I go for mathematics (to get hanging gardens) and then try to grab a religion -- Confucianism or, if I miss that, one of the others.

In many cases, investment in techs such as agriculture, animal domestication, and hunting can be more valuable than bronze working chop-rushing.

If you are playing as a civ with early religious technologies, you may wish to shoot straight for an early religion. I prefer the path that leads to Hinduism/Judaism since if you are beaten to Hinduism, Judaism is right around the corner, while Buddhism is a dead end (at least for a while) and the AI seems to go for it quickly. Monotheism also has the benefit of offering the organized religion civic, which at +25% building construction (including wonders!) can prove to be an enormous benefit to your civilization's development. This, as well as the early spread of religion from your cities (with happiness etc), can make an early religion very, very worthwhile. From there, you can go for bronze-working and chop rush, or you can go straight for alphabet, trade for bronze working (which is typically readily available once alphabet is discovered), and chop rush.

Going for the religious techs (polytheism->monotheism) early has great advantages even for a non-spiritual civ, if you can get there quickly. The religious techs offer key early-era wonders, including Stonehenge and the Parthenon, and perhaps the most important ancient-era civic, organized religion, which can further enhance your speed in constructing wonders and other buildings. If you don’t go for these techs very quickly, you will probably lose the wonder race. As you can’t trade for techs until you have alphabet, and many maps feature limited access to potential trading partners, the only reliable way to get these techs is to research them yourself. If you are playing as a philosophical civ, getting the early wonders is especially critical.

Either way has advantages and drawbacks, but both playing styles can be viable. Of course you can mix and match these: shoot for early religion and then quickly add bronze working (but miss out on some early chop-rushing), or research bronze working and then pick up the religious techs in time to get access to the wonders (but you will probably lose the early religion race). There undoubtedly others as well, but the above two are my favorites.

Here are some of the key techs I focus on acquiring, making modification depending on map type and difficulty level:

0. Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Hunting: these techs are vital to be able to hook up your bonus resources. Farming in particular is very important.
1. Mysticism (65 beakers). Stonehenge, and prerequisite for other religious techs.
2. Polytheism (130 beakers). Hinduism and Parthenon (key for philosophical civs).
3. Bronze working (156 beakers). Chop rushing. ‘nuf said.
4. Wheel (78 beakers). Workers and resources won’t do you much good until you can build roads. This can be moved down below monotheism depending on whether you have already gotten a religion and how tight you feel the race for Judaism will be.
5. Pottery (104 beakers). Your workers can now start building cottages, and allows granary. Because of how long cottages take to develop, it is important to get cottages started early. Also to defray the heavy upkeep costs of a large empire.
6. Masonry (104 beakers). Prerequisite for Monotheism. Allows building mines and quarries. While researching this you will hopefully be sending a settler and a worker to hook up stone (stonehenge, pyramids, hanging gardens) and marble (Parthenon) resources.
7. Monotheism (156 beakers). Judaism and organized religion. The moment you are ready to begin building Stonehenge in your capital (or any other building), switch to organized religion to provide a +25% hammer bonus for wonders and buildings.
8. Writing (156 beakers) and alphabet (390 beakers). Allows tech trades, allowing the player to pick up any missed techs.
9. Mathematics (325 beakers) – workers produce +50% hammers from tree chops (up to 30). Also enables hanging garden, a key wonder for rapid population expansion. Very important for both counts.
10. Metal casting (585 beakers). Forges add +25% productivity to any city where they are built. When you have stone and/or marble, organized religion civic, and forges, your cities can quickly construct buildings and wonders. Unfortunately, this tech quite expensive.
11. Literature (260 beakers). Heroic epic, national epic, great library, and libraries. All important structures.
12. Music (780 beakers). Free great artist to the first discoverer. Also allows Notre Dame and cathedrals, vital happiness buildings.
13. Drama (390) and philosophy (1040 beakers). Philosophy offers Taoism to the first discoverer, and pacifism is a helpful civic for philosophical civs. Angkor Wat is nice (+1 production from priests in all cities) if you can get it.
14. Paper (780), Education (2340 – allows universities/oxford), Liberalism (1820). Liberalism is a high priority both because it offers a free technology (you can pick the most expensive one available) and because of the free speech civic. The +2 gold from towns education offers is nice as long as enough of your cottages have developed into towns to warrant the expense of this tech path.
15. printing press (2080), requires paper. +1 commerce in towns and villages. Another economic bonus, but the expense is so high that other techs may be a higher priority. Replaceable parts (2340) offers +1 hammer for watermills and windmills. This is really the point in the game where watermills become worthwhile.
16. nationalism (2340), constitution (2600), democracy (3640). Nationalism and constitution have little to recommend them, except as prerequisites for democracy. Democracy is a huge advance to both economics and production because it allows universal suffrage (+1 production boost to towns) and emancipation (doubles rate of cottages -> towns).
17. Divine Right (1560) islam, spiral minaret, Versailles. Another opportunity to pick up a religion. Spiral minaret provides major economic boost (+1 gold per state religion building in all cities). It is however very expensive.

Currency (520 beakers): +1 trade route per city, and enables gold trading. Both of these can produce a major economic boost. I usually wait and trade for this, but getting it early may be warranted if your upkeep costs are becoming difficult to manage or your tech rate is dropping.

Others:
Iron working: Reveals iron. Being able to clear jungles is necessary to be able to access some resources and to increase health. Usually I trade for this tech after alphabet, but there are certainly exceptions requiring early iron working (if you have a bad starting location in a jungle harming productivity).
Iron working is critical to military also. As soon as you get this and iron is revealed, it is vital to claim and develop that iron promptly. Make sure to devote one city to military to pump out archers (before iron to garrison all your cities) and swordsmen (after iron) for defense and offense.
Archery: a must if you have aggressive neighbors. You may be able to hold off until after alphabet and trade for this depending on your setup, but if you are playing against human players, you need to get this ASAP.

Other key techs

Mathematics. Hanging Gardens -- + 1 POP and +1 health in all your cities is huge, especially when you have a lot of small and moderate-size cities. The hanging gardens can really explode your productivity when you have a large empire from a chop-rush settler rush.
Music (free great artist)
Military Tradition (cavalry rule the middle ages)
Divine Right (Versailles/Islam)
Metallurgy (watermill)
Democracy (emancipation & universal suffrage).
Communism (state property)
Then to any other techs that improve the benefits of your improvements (i.e. electricity).

I also try to pick up the techs that offer free great people or free techs. These techs obviously represent a priority, as only the first discoverer gets the bonus.

13. MILITARY STRATEGY

The Game Plan

Before each game, consider spending a few minutes to write down some basic goals and strategies that you wish to incorporate. The plan will depend considerably on map type, terrain, size, difficulty leve, and opponents (AI or human). Of course the plan will need to be flexible to take advantage of opportunities and to respond to contingencies and challenges.

After the game, review your strategy and honestly assess which aspects worked well, and what aspects fell flat or met challenges. Use your insight to fine-tune your strategy and improve your next game plan.

Anticipation and Preparation

The computer will attack suddenly and in force in CIV. It is not unusual for the computer to DOW someone and raze their city with a stack of units in the same turn. The AI, like human players, is an opportunist. If you happen to build a city right next to enemy military units, or if AI players see a poorly defended city near their military units, they are more likely to declare war than if your cities were defended and settlers were escorted. Close borders also spark tensions. Different religion is also a major cause of hostility. The AI can and does declare war even when there are mildly positive relations, so don't be too smug at your relationship score. You must defend your cities and resources. Even if you are not a warmonger, build a credible defense force. If your military is much weaker than your neighbors, you will soon find yourself in war. Anticipate attacks in advance. Is your neighbor massing catapults and swordsmen near your border? What are the stacked archer and warrior doing near your cities? Assume the worst, be observant, and be informed. Judge your enemy by their capability, not their words or relations.

Border Cities

Beware of border cities without a large cultural buffer between other civilizations. In one game I had a brilliant idea to build the forbidden palace in a border city. Then while I was engaged in a war against the Mongols on the other side of my empire, Saladin declared war and conquered the city the same turn with hordes of catapults, knights, and crossbowmen. Expensive cultural improvements are instantly lost once a city is conquered. Don't put anything too critical in border cities, especially those without a significant buffer zone, and don't get too involved in constructing major buildings in border cities until you have them well-defended with strong contemporary units. Don't leave your back side exposed. And don't let success in the tech race come at the expense of national security.

Strategy

When starting a war, consider your objectives. What are your goals? Acquisition of specific resources or cities? Capturing a wonder? Total annexation? Or, if caught by surprise, would you be happy to get away with a white peace? Once you have determined your goals, come up with a strategic plan to get there. Make sure that your unit mix is balanced and well-thought out. More than once in my early games, I found myself besieging cities with large stacks of units but no catapults -- bad idea. What are you going to do about city defenses? Are their resources you can deny your opponent? Will you create a two or three pronged attack and exploit vulnerabilities? Will you land a horde of cavalry and catapults by his capital for a sneak attack after shipping them behind enemy lines? It is much easier to achieve objectives if you know what your specific objectives are and have a viable plan to achieve them. It's far more effective to have a plan and fine-tune it as needed while in process than to fly by the seat of your pants and make it up as you go along.

Also take time to consider your opponent's strategy...*especially* if playing a human. Look at your own empire and assess your own vulnerabilities. Is YOUR iron supply undefended? Could an enemy wreak havoc with a few knights shipped in to attack rear cities? Do you have rows of cottages in a border city ripe for plundering? If you were your enemy, what would you do? If your vulnerabilities are lost on you, be assured that they will not be lost on a competent opponent.

Resource Denial

When planning a war, aim to take out key military and civilian resources. The resource screen shows you exactly what resources your opponents have. Some of the resources, like copper and iron, are essential for war. If you enemy has one source of iron and you fortify on that square with good defenders and pillage it, your enemy will instantly lose the ability to make swordsmen -- and many other units, unless he has a copper supply as well. No copper, iron, or horses? Suddenly your formerly formidable medieval opponent is back in the stone age and is able to produce only warriors and archers. A few strategic moves of this nature can turn the tide of a war.

Other special resources are worth pillaging also. If your opponent has large cities that are marginally happy or healthy, pillaging a few luxury or health resources can catastrophically damage commerce, tech speed, and productivity across his entire empire. Pillaging of specialty resources in this way has a far greater effect than the pillaging of cottages, since the effects are felt in every connected city.

To Pillage or Not to Pillage

Some argue for pillaging as many of your opponents cottages as possible in order to cause long-term damage to his research and economy. Against a superior or closely-matched opponent, this can be a good idea. However, it can be shortsighted if you have the upper hand.

If I am convinced that I have superior force and can take a city, I don't pillage cottages, mines, or watermills. Given how long cottages take to develop, I pillage them ONLY when I think that I am unable to take a city outright during the current war. As attractive as the quick gold from pillaging seems, it is trivial compared to having a long-term free revenue source that your opponent built for you -- adding insult to injury. Conquered cities will often have high maintenance due to their distance from your capital and the incremental augmentation of city number, and if they can pay their own expenses right off the bat, your warmongering will be much more economically sustainable.

Diplomacy

When evenly matched or over-matched, diplomacy plays an immense role. If the Mongols catch you by surprise and burn a couple border cities, what better way to pay them back than bribing their neighbors with tech or gold to declare war on them? Sure, they may have thought they were smart to exploit a momentary vulnerability when their keshiks found a lightly-guarded city...but finding themselves in a war on two or three fronts will wipe the smile off their faces and take the pressure off you. If I am caught by surprise in a war for which I am not fully prepared or do not want, I do not hesitate to trade prime techs to bribe allies to join on my side.

Discuss this article on the forum

A Beginner's Guide to the Specialist Economy (SE)

1. Optimized regrowth of population from slavery/drafting. (Note: this sacrifices research until regrowth is complete.)
   
2. Less danger from pillaging since farms are much easier to rebuild than cottages which have matured to towns.
   
3. Independence from the Slider increases flexibility to divert commerce directly to gold for upgrades or to Culture/Happiness if the slider is used.
   
4. More effective at higher difficulty levels (Emperor and above).

1. May require more micromanaging compared to Cottage Economy (CE).
   
2. Specialists require supporting food resources or farms. In cases where food resources or fresh water for farms are unavailable this may be a limitation on early city placement. After Civil Service this becomes less of a consideration.
   
3. Specialists can only be assigned if certain buildings exist (e.g. Library enables two Scientists).
   
4. Caste System eliminates the restrictions for item 3, but conflicts with Slavery as well as other labor civics. This may later become critical if Emancipation is adopted by another civ, since the unhappiness generated by failing to adopt Emancipation can be a serious drain on productivity.

1. Prioritize food resources and farms in new cities.
   
2. New cities only need Granary, Library and possibly Courthouse. Any other buildings are secondary. (This doesn't apply to Production cities which will be the same as for CE).
   
3. You may drop the Slider to 0 when Alphabet has been researched and trade for any techs you do not yet know. This is to maximize cash for other purposes -- usually military upgrades or high maintenance costs due to conquests. However, it may be wise to keep the slider up at the maximum that is still generating a positive income for certain critical techs such as Literature and the Paper-Education-Library sequence (if there is no GS available for lightbulbing these).
   
4. Alternatively, if dropping the Slider from 100% to 0% results in only a factor of 2 or 3 increase in the number of turns for your current tech, then it is about time to drop it. If it is much more than 3, you probably need to focus on getting more scientists up.
   
5. Philosophy, Paper and Education are prerequisites for Liberalism and can be lightbulbed by a Great Scientist. Consider saving a GS or three for these techs.

An Advanced Guide to the Specialist Economy for Emperor and Above

Balancing Growth and Warfare in Civ IV

BTS: A guide for higher difficulties for standard speed and maps (emperor+)

Choosing the Right Kind of Power Plant

City Specialization: Where I do it

In Excl’s article, there’s a section on feeding your city where you count the amount of positive and negative food tiles, which results in the amount of food the city lacks to support working all tiles in its BFC.

This is a very valuable number – but not for the reason most people use it. Whereas this number does indicate the amount of extra food you’ll need to reach population 20 (and thus the number of pre-biology farms the city needs), a city of that size is largely unattainable for a significant portion of the game. That is to say, even though you’ll eventually need those extra farms, there may be no justification for immediately building those farms as a priority.

As Excl put it, the amount of food lacking in your city determines how many tiles you’ll have to devote to feeding your city – and “everything else can go towards specialization.” So, the smaller the number, the fewer tiles the city can devote towards specialization. Thus, large (hopefully positive) numbers indicate a large number of tiles you can specialize and can be used as an indicator of how good the city site is – of how well the city is likely to accept specialization.

What that number does not indicate is what type of specialization the city should receive. So that’s what I’ll address here now.

Cities essentially specialize in one of three things: (as a surplus), or . This specialization is what allows them to become GP Farms, Production Hubs, Commerce Centres, etc. Which of these three elements the city can specialize in is ultimately dependent upon the land and the game Era.

Production cities specialize in hammers.

Food cities specialize in [surplus] food.

Commerce cities specialize in commerce.

How each city then uses its specialization is up to you, the builder. For example, a production city can focus on building only Wonders to become a very powerful GP farm; or a Food city can focus less on specialists and more on simply growing to attract substantial trade routes. But I digress … just don’t think you’re limited to what I present here is all I’m saying.

Because a late-game city’s specialization propensity isn’t strictly dependent upon its available tiles, this post is primarily concerned with cities during the Ancient to Renaissance Eras.

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These are typically the steps I start with:

1. Check the production. Using only hills and production resources (consider them both as improved), count up how much production the city can handle, how much food it costs to maintain it and how many citizens are required to work the production tiles used. Ideally, you want to see high production (15 - 20+) with few tiles (4 - 7).
   

   For example, a city (1P) with 2 Grassland Hills (-1F, 3P each), 2 Plains Hills (-2F, 4P each) and a Plains Horse (-1F, 4P) would be -7F, 19P @ 4 – meaning the city can generate 19 hammers at the expense of 7 food using 4 Citizens. Even though the city center produces +2F, I often keep its food production with the food calculation.

2. Check the +food. Using only food resources (consider them as improved and as if the city has a Lighthouse), count up how much +food the city can maintain and how many citizens are required to work those tiles. Ideally, you want to see high +food (+8 - +12+) with few tiles (3 - 4)
   

   For example, a city (+2F) with Grassland Hill Pigs (+3F) and Clams (+3F) would be +8F @ 2 – meaning the city can generate +8F using 2 Citizens.

3. Check the terrain features. Make note of how many unworkable tiles the city has (Peak, Desert, Ice, etc.) and terrain features such as Fresh Water, being coastal and/or riverside, how many non-resource water tiles the city has, how many grassland tiles are available and how many of those grassland tiles are riverside, how many riverside tiles there are, how many Flood Plains are in the city’s BFC. Ideally, you want to see no unworkable tiles, many riverside grassland tiles (6 - 10) and minimal water tiles if coastal (2 - 4).
   
   
4. Check the rest of your empire. Make note of all the cities in your empire – specifically what kinds of cities you already have and what kinds you don’t have.

Knowing what your empire needs and the terrain features available can often help ‘break the tie’ when a city has multiple specialization options. Hopefully after this next section, you’ll know which of these features helps each type of city.

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The Production City

In my experience, production cities are the toughest to found. Not only do they need access to production-rich tiles like hills and strategic resources but because those tiles are usually food-deprived, the site also needs food-rich tiles to maintain the balance. Furthermore, because +production% buildings tend to substantially increase , the city often needs even more food and/or access to Fresh Water.

How much production do I want? I like to see at least 15 to 20 hammers per turn – preferably using 6 tiles or less.

How much food do I want? At least enough to support the production tiles, preferably using 3 tiles or less. Feeding the production tiles with +2F or more left over is ideal.

What kinds of terrain features do I want? The best production cities usually have some or all of the following:

• Access to Fresh Water to counteract .
• Riverside for Fresh Water and to build a Levee, Hydro Plant and/or Three Gorges Dam.
• Typically few Flood Plains (4 or less) because of the unhealth they cause.
• Few non-resource water tiles if coastal (2 is the fewest water tiles you can have without sacrificing coastal).
• Riverside tiles (at least 6 -- especially Grassland) for the Levee bonus and for building Watermills.
• Forests for and for building Lumbermills.

The Food City

Though high +food cities are typically used to run specialists and as GP Farms, food serves many purposes. As we see in the production city, good food is necessary to support the production tiles. In coastal cities, +food can be used to support immense growth to increase intercontinental trade route yield (special thanks to Diamondeye for reminding me "International" doesn't always equate to Intercontinental). Or, it can be used to support rapid growth for whipping expensive buildings and/or units. Don’t get locked into rigid ideas on how food should be utilized in any given city.

I find food cities to be fairly easy to locate, because they essentially only need access to a couple food resources. The difficult art of building a great food city is grabbing up multiple food resources without hurting the cities around it.

Because this post deals with early era cities, it's worth noting before Civil Service, lakeside and riverside tiles (especially Flood Plains) are vital for continued growth of a food city. Ironically, riverside tiles are also valued very highly by commerce cities, so especially consider the needs of your empire when choosing between food or commerce specializations.

How much production do I want? For a non-production city, I like to see at least 8-12 hammers per turn in order to build the city’s vital buildings (like Temples, Markets, etc.). Keep in mind that with the Universal Suffrage civic, buildings can be rush-bought.

How much +food do I want? For steady growth (and light whipping), I like to see at least +6F to +8F. For running specialists (and heavy whipping), I like to see at least +8F to +12F, preferably using 4 tiles or less. For a GP Farm, more than +10F using 3 tiles or less is ideal. In every case, the most +food using the fewest tiles is key.

What kinds of terrain features do I want? The best food cities usually have some or all of the following:

• Access to Fresh Water to combat from high population.
• Riverside Grassland tiles and/or Flood Plains (6 total or more) for farming pre-Civil Service.
• Non-riverside Grassland tiles (6 or more) for farming post-Civil Service/Biology.
• Coastal to reap the benefits of larger populations in the form of intercontinental trade routes.
• Few non-resource water tiles if coastal, since they can’t increase growth.

The Commerce City

I find commerce cities to be the simplest cities to find, because nearly any city with any amount of +food has the potential to become a commerce city (not necessarily a good one, but a commerce city nonetheless). All you really need is land to cottage. However, don’t let this oversimplification lead you to believe only cities with low +food should be used as commerce cities. One particular strength of a high food commerce city is the ability to rapidly grow to maximum population in order to work all available commerce tiles.

How much production do I want? For a non-production city, I like to see at least 8-12 hammers per turn in order to build the city’s vital buildings (like Temples, Markets, etc.). Keep in mind that with the Universal Suffrage civic, Towns generate 1 and buildings can be rush-bought.

How much +food do I want? I like to see at least 1 food resource -- ideally generating +4F or more total. (Again, high +food is a bonus.) A ‘soft’ requirement is enough food to support production when necessary.

What kinds of terrain features do I want? The best commerce cities usually have some or all of the following:

• Coastal to reap the benefits of intercontinental trade routes.
• Few non-resource water tiles if coastal, since they yield little .
  An exception might be a Financial Civ with the Colossus.
• Riverside tiles (at least 6 -- especially Grassland) for cottaging.
• Grassland tiles (at least 6 -- preferably Riverside) for cottaging.
• High-commerce resources like Dyes, Gems and Gold.

Here’s a city screenshot from a recent game (special thanks to DiamondEye for supplying me with this game) with its improvements stripped:

1. Check the production. Using Plains Hill City Center (+2F, 2P), 2 Plains Hills (-4F, 8P), 1 Grassland Hill (-1F, 3P) and a Grassland Hill Pig (+3F, 1P), Paris can generate 0F, 14P with 4 Citizens.
   

   Good production, but probably not enough to make it a contender.

2. Check the +food. Using City Center (+2F), 3 Clams (+9F) and 1 Grassland Hill Pig (+3F), Paris can generate +14F with 4 Citizens.
   

   Just working the food resources, I can support 7 specialists at population 11. Not at all shabby.

3. Check the terrain features. “+8” Riverside & Coastal city with no unworkable tiles. 13 non-city Riverside tiles (7 Grassland, 2 Flood Plains). 5 Water tiles (2 non-resource). Good forestry.
   

   +8 riverside and coastal … wow! That’s an indicator this city is going to easily become a megalopolis. Coastal and riverside means better trade routes and ample + to support a large population. This city could easily be a superb GP Farm or Commerce City.

4. Check the rest of your empire.
   

   This was pretty much the best non-production city in the empire, so it was a tough decision. There was another good coastal riverside candidate for GP/Commerce with fewer food resources and less production, so I made Paris the GP Farm (I wanted the production available for nabbing good GP-making Wonders). I was also playing a warmonger game not expected to even see Liberalism, so I wanted short-term specialist payout instead of the long-term cottage ‘investment’.

If you’d like to see more examples, here’s the other 7 cities in that game:

Spoiler:

1. Check the production. -10F, 24P using 6 citizens.
   
2. Check the +food. +6F using 1 citizen (+12F using 4 citizens on farmed flood plains).
   
3. Check the terrain features. “-2” lakeside city with a few riverside tiles and not too many grasslands. Farmed Flood Plains can support production.
   
4. Check the rest of your empire.
   

   This was the best production city on the map, so it clearly became the Production City.

1. Check the production. -8F, 18P using 6 citizens.
   
2. Check the +food. +9F using 2 citizens .
   
3. Check the terrain features. “0” riverside city with 14 workable Riverside tiles (4 Grassland, 3 Flood Plains).
   
4. Check the rest of your empire.
   

   This city has the potential to be anything. It was #2 in production and #3 in GP/Commerce. Being at war, I made it a secondary production city -- primarily because it already had production infrastructure in place.
   
   EDIT: As Quechua points out in a response post, Turfan is more ideally suited to becoming a commerce city (Gold and Desert Hill Mines aren't particularly good production tiles). Keeping it a production city was a poor long term decision but a good short term decision. Had this game not ended early in a Conquest Victory, Turfan would've eventually been converted into a Commerce City.

1. Check the production. -6F, 15P using 4 citizens.
   
2. Check the +food. +4 using 1 citizen.
   
3. Check the terrain features. “-8” Coastal & Riverside city with 1 unworkable tile. 10 Riverside tiles (4 Grassland, 1 Flood Plains). Shares 2 tiles with Paris.
   
4. Check the rest of your empire.
   

   This city was probably the worst. I farmed the Flood Plains and 1 Grassland, Cottaged the rest and just let it work them.

1. Check the production. -7F, 22P using 8 citizens.
   
2. Check the +food. +5F using 1 citizen after Calendar.
   
3. Check the terrain features. “-4” Riverside city with 2 unworkable tiles.
   
4. Check the rest of your empire.
   

   Having very little food means this city can’t support specialists or any serious production without either being huge or having Biology-boosted farms, so I Cottage-spammed this city.
   
   EDIT: As Quechua points out in a response post, Medina is also suited to become a production city. However, the circumstances in my game prevented this primarily because I didn't yet have Calendar or any infrastructure in the city when I conquered it. I also prefer to afford my production cities +2F while working its production tiles, which wasn't immediately plausible. So when presented the choice of bringing it immediately online as a growing commerce city or stagnating it for mediocre production, I chose the more immediately necessary economic support. Like my decision in Turfan, this may not have been the best long term decision but was good in the short term and didn't appear to detract from my Conquest Victory.

1. Check the production. -5F, 11P using 3 citizens.
   
2. Check the +food. +6F using 1 citizen.
   
3. Check the terrain features. “-4” riverside city with only 5 riverside tiles (3 Grassland, 2 Flood Plains). Sharing 2 tiles with Beshbalik.
   
4. Check the rest of your empire.
   

   With only moderate production and food potential and since this was my capital, (which I didn’t feel like moving), I cottage spammed Karakorum and ran Bureaucracy.

1. Check the production. -3F, 10P using 3 citizens.
   
2. Check the +food. +6F using 2 citizens.
   
3. Check the terrain features. “+3” Coastal & Riverside city with 10 workable riverside tiles (3 Grassland, 4 Flood Plains). Shares 1 Flood Plain with Uruk (who needs it).
   
4. Check the rest of your empire.
   

   Being #2 in GP/Commerce potential, I turned this into a secondary specialist city to run Merchants (I wanted a Great Merchant) with the intent of cottage-spamming it if the game ever made it to Democracy (it didn’t).

1. Check the production. -3F, 12P using 3 citizens.
   
2. Check the +food. +4F using 1 citizen.
   
3. Check the terrain features. “-4” landlocked city with 3 unworkable tiles and no riverside tiles. Sharing 2 tiles with Karakorum.
   
4. Check the rest of your empire.
   

   This city is hurting for food but has Grassland Horses to redeem it. Since I cottage-spammed Karakorum, I took the Plains Hill and turned this city into a “defense-only” military production city making nothing but cheap Archers and Spearmen.

I had really good land in that game, so the choices were actually pretty simple. The main things I noticed from that land is that 50% of my cities could crank production pretty high, and 25% had great production. That in itself lends itself to warmongering and Wonder-hogging. I chose warmongering, so it was easy for me to lean towards an early-ending Specialist-heavy economy, which my city specializations mirrored.

I don’t purport this ‘method’ as the end-all, be-all of analyzing city potential. It’s simply the method I use (BTW, I play at Monarch, so I can’t vouch for this method at Emperor+ yet.) If you use a different or better method, I’d love to hear about it and try it out.

I prefer to run the Caste System civic for the vast majority of my games, so my empires usually lean towards a Hybrid Specialist Economy. In these games, my commerce cities typically have little food.

That being said, I don’t restrict my economy based on my own preference. If I see the land immediately around me favours cottaging, I’m not at all averse to running a Commerce/Cottage Economy and usually will.

I use this method for determining what I feel is the best dot-map for the land around me as well as a guide to whether captured cities should be kept or moved (as well as what to do with them if they are kept).

This method of analyzing cities and terrain also helps me determine the most viable strategies. For example, if my land is weak in production, I know war and/or Wonder-hogging may not be the best game plan … so I know I should prioritize only the Wonders I need and avoid war unless it is especially quick and decisive or will gain me a good production city. Similarly, if my land is especially heavy in production, I may prioritize warmongering and Wonder-hogging.

I consider this post largely “under construction”, so I’m open to any suggestions on how to improve it …

Civilization IV Leader Traits: Self-Actualization, Axemen, and You

Comprehensive Guide to Terrain, Improvements, Resources, and City Placement

• The Basics about Terrain
• Base Terrain and Terrain Features
• Cumulative Tile Values

• The Basics about Workers
• Basic Worker Actions
• Worker Turns for Improvements
• Terrain Specific Improvements
• Base FPC Values for Improvements
• Other things to note about Improvements
• Chopping Forests
• How Terrain Modifies Improvements (detailed charts)

• The Basics about Resources
• Resource Improvements
• Added Bonuses Through City Improvements
• Resources and Terrain Types

• The Basics about City Placement
• Resource Bonuses for Cities
• Other Important Factors when Placing a City

• How Civics and Traits effect FPC
• Links to related guides

Comprehensive Unique Building Guide (BTS)

Gallic Warrior --> Maceman ---\
                               \__ Grenadier --> Machine Gun
          /--> Crossbowman ____/\                      \
Archer --/                     \_\Rifleman --> Infantry --> Mechanized Infantry
         \-->  Longbowman _______/                      \
Musketman_______________________/                        \___SAM Infantry


Unit          Cost Strength Moves           Bonuses                Upgrade    
                                                                                                                                
Archer         25     3       1   1st Strike,                     Longbowman 
                                  +50% City & +25% Hills Defense  Crossbowman
Gallic Warrior 60     6       1   +10% City Attack                Maceman
                                  Starts with Guerrilla I 
Longbowman     50     6       1   1st Strike                      Rifleman
                                  +25% City & +25% Hills Defense 
Crossbowman    60     6       1   1st Strike,                     Grenadier 
                                  +50% vs. Melee Units            Rifleman
Maceman        80     8       1   +50% vs. Melee Units            Grenadier
                                                                  Rifleman
Musketman      80     9       1                                   Rifleman 
Grenadier     100    12       1   +50% vs. Riflemen               Machine Gun 
                                                                  Infantry
Rifleman      110    14       1   +25% vs. Mounted Units          Infantry
Machine Gun   125    18       1   Can only defend, 1st Strike  
                                  +25% vs. Gunpowder Units        Mech Infantry
Infantry      140    20       1   +25% vs. Gunpowder Units        SAM Infantry
                                                                  Mech Infantry
SAM Infantry  150    18       1   40% Intercept Chance
                                  +50% vs. Helicopter Units      
Mech Infantry 200    32       2   20% Intercept Chance
                                  Starts with March
*Beyond the Sword   
Archery Unit
Melee Unit
Gunpowder Unit
Siege Unit

Unit        Cost Strength Moves           Bonuses                    Upgrade    
                                                                                                                                
Chariot      25     4       2   10% Withdrawal, 100% vs. Axemen      Knight
Keshik       50     6       2   20% Withdrawal, 1st Strike           Knight
                                Ignore move cost, -10% vs. City
                                +50% vs. Cats & Trebs 
War Elephant 60     8       1   +50% vs. Mounted Units               Calvary
Knight       90    10       2   Immune to 1st Strike                 Calvary 
                                Flank Attack vs Cats & Trebs*        Cuirassier*
Cuirassier* 100    12       2   15% Withdrawal, Immune to 1st Strike Calvary
                                Flank Attack vs Cannon
Calvary     120    15       2   30% Withdrawal, +50% vs. Cannon      Gunship
Gunship     160    24       4   25% Withdrawal, +100% vs. Armoured
                                Ignore move cost, Cannot capture City
                                Flank Artillery & Mobile Artillery*
*Beyond the Sword
Mounted Unit
Helicopter Unit 

Unit          Cost Strength Moves           Bonuses                Upgrade    
                                                                                                                                
Archer         25     3       1   1st Strike,                     Longbowman 
                                  +50% City & +25% Hills Defense  Crossbowman
Longbowman     50     6       1   1st Strike                      Rifleman
                                  +25% City & +25% Hills Defense 
Crossbowman    60     6       1   1st Strike,                     Grenadier 
                                  +50% vs. Melee Units            Rifleman
Grenadier     100    12       1   +50% vs. Riflemen              Machine Gun 
                                                                  Infantry
Rifleman      110    14       1   +25% vs. Mounted Units          Infantry
Machine Gun   125    18       1   Can only defend, 1st Strike  
                                  +25% vs. Gunpowder Units        Mech Infantry
Infantry      140    20       1   +25% vs. Gunpowder Units        SAM Infantry
                                                                  Mech Infantry
SAM Infantry  150    18       1   40% Intercept Chance
                                  +50% vs. Helicopter Units      
Mech Infantry 200    32       2   20% Intercept Chance
                                  Starts with March
*Beyond the Sword   
Archery Unit
Gunpowder Unit
Siege Unit

Catapult \
          \___ Cannon ---> Artillery ---> Mobile Artillery* 
Trebuchet /

Grenadier --> Machine Gun --> Mechanized Infantry

Unit                Cost Strength Moves    Bonuses                 
                                                                                                                                
Catapult             40     5       1  25% Withdrawal, 
                                       Bombard City Defences (-15%/turn)     
Trebuchet            60     4       1  25% Withdrawal, +100% vs. City                    
                                       Bombard City Defences (-25%/turn)           
Cannon              100    12       1  25% Withdrawal, 
                                       Bombard City Defences (-20%/turn) 
Machine Gun         120    18       1  1st Strike, Defend Only, +50% vs. GP Units
Artillery           100    18       1  25% Withdrawal, +50% vs. Seige                     
                                       Bombard City Defences (-25%/turn)
Mechanized Infantry 200    32       2  20% Aircraft Intercept, Starts with March
Mobile Artillery*   200    26       2  Max 85% Attack Damage, +50% vs. Seige                    
                                       Immune to Siege Collateral Damage   
*Beyond the Sword

Espionage Guide 1.0

Getting the Most From Your Cities: A guide to Industry and Economy

I'm posting this because it doesn't seem to be redundant with Stuporstar’s city placement article. Read his article first if you’re confused about the numerical values of the various terrains and improvements. Also, this article was written based on version 1.09. I won’t experience 1.52 until I get back from Christmas vacation, but I haven’t seen any references to anything that would drastically change the advice given here.

1. Basic City Placement – Resources

Food – An Army Marches on its Stomach

Believe it or not, food is the basic resource in civ. Even though food is itself quite limited as to its uses, it is the basis on which all other goods are produced. The uses of food are as follows:

• Spend on population by letting it accumulate
• Spend on settlers or workers (along with shields)
• Spend on shields or commerce by assigning specialists or working brown tiles
  (For the purposes of this article, brown tiles are those that produce less than 2 food and therefore cannot fully support the population point that is assigned to work them. Green tiles are those that produce 2 or more food.)

The sources of surplus food are:

• 2 units of free food in every city
• Bonus food resources and floodplains
• farms/pastures/nets

Usually, gaining extra food requires forgoing some other good, as exceptional food tiles seldom produce more than one coin or hammer in addition to the food (the common exceptions being cows (3 hammers) and nets (2-3 coins). This is especially painful for a financial leader as a high-food tile will probably be a tile you cannot get the commerce bonus for. For this reason, seafood is a financial leader’s best friend. Plenty of seafood bonuses will give your cities the needed food surplus while still getting 3+ commerce per tile, something that cannot be done with farms.

Shields – Should I call them Hammers?

Hammers (a.k.a. Shields) are the most directly useful resource. They are converted directly into buildings and units. They can also be somewhat elusive. Like food, shields are highly dependant on terrain. However, unlike food, it is often difficult to get as many shields as you need for a particular city. The sources of shields are:

• Bonus resources
• Mines (usually on hills)
• Engineers and priests (and citizens in times or desperation)
• Forests and plains
• Watermills, windmills, and workshops later in the game
• Chopping forests
• Rushing

Of these methods, hills will probably contribute the bulk of your shields. Forests and plains give you only one shield apiece, and generally don’t give much else. A grassland forest is usually not worth using if it could be replaced with a grassland cottage, unless you can build a lumbermill on it. Similarly, a plains tile (or a workshop/grassland) will, in the early game, produce exactly one shield, and if not farmed, will consume food. Plains/forests are somewhat better sources of shields if you have plenty of surplus food. However, in the end, there are some city locations which will be chronically shield-deprived until the modern tile improvements start yielding extra shields (guilds for workshops and replaceable parts for mills, to be exact). If you settle such locations in the classical age, you will be forced to budget a limited number of one-time shield infusions from chopping and rushing. Such cities should never even try to produce units or wonders until the discovery of replaceable parts and chemistry allows them to get a respectable production from watermills and workshops. They can, however, be good sources of commerce if surrounded with cottages and given a few commerce-multiplying buildings. They can also run specialists, but make poor dedicated GP farms since they will not have the extra GPPs from wonders. Also, it is generally agreed that all other things being equal, a large expanse of flatlands should be cottaged rather than farmed to get the best commerce return unless it is dedicated specifically to producing great people.

Commerce

Commerce is the most portable resource. It can be produced anywhere, and generally benefits your empire as a whole as opposed to the city in which it is produced (unless the culture slider is turned up very high). A city that does not produce much commerce is nothing to worry about provided you're getting enough commerce elsewhere. The sources of commerce are:

• Bonus resources (again)
• Cottages
• Specialists
• Water tiles
• Trade routes
• River tiles
• Mills

In addition, gold (a related good which is generally equivalent to commerce in most cases) is gotten from a few other sources:

• Shrines (and certain wonders)
• Pillaging/capturing cities
• Diplomatic deals

The most productive of these sources are cottages and specialists. Every civ will need one or the other of these commerce sources. Shrines, trade routes, and water tiles are also very useful supplements to one’s economy and should be sought out wherever possible. The commerce from mills comes later in the game and is less than that gained from a cottage built in the ancient era, so these improvements should not be regarded as a primary source of commerce but rather as a source of late-game shields that also produces a bit of commerce.

The main uses of commerce are to pay the city/civic/military upkeep bills (as gold) and to do research (as beakers). Secondary uses are:

• Deals with other civs (tax slider)
• Culture and happiness (Culture slider)
• Rushing construction (tax slider and Universal Suffrage)

2. Spotting Resource-rich Sites

Bonus Resources

The first indicator of a rich city site is the presence of bonus resources. Bonus resources are essential in the early game for making a small city productive. Once your cities get large, the importance of resources diminishes, but your initial cities should always have some usable resources in the border (note that many luxuries are not useable before calendar).

Good terrain - Cottage Green

Good terrain is terrain that can easily be made productive. These terrains include grassland, hills, floodplains, and rivers. With the exception of hills, these tiles all produce at least two food and they can all be improved to provide multiple shields or commerce. For shields, look for hills balanced by river grasslands/floodplains or bonus food resources. Hills without a balancing food surplus will be useless as the city cannot afford to work them and still grow. For commerce, look for high-food river tiles if you plan to make the city a specialist-GP farm, otherwise look for grasslands or floodplains on which to build cottages. Forests and jungles can be cleared without too much effort, so their presence should not deter you from founding in an otherwise promising location. In fact, forests are a life-saver for a commerce-only city as they can be chopped to provide you with a courthouse, library, lighthouse, or whatever other improvements you might need but are unable to build with the city's paltry shield production.

Mediocre terrain – DON’T farm brown

Plains, lakes, and coasts are not particularly valuable under most circumstances and should not be the only accessible tiles in your city radius. A farmed plain will return 2 food before biology (enough to feed the citizen working the tile), one shield, and one commerce if on a river. This population point is not being particularly productive, considering that he could be producing 2 shields or 3 commerce, plus GPPs, as a specialist. True the specialist will slow down growth, but if the best terrain you have to work is a plain, further population won't be very useful. Building a cottage will eventually give a greater return, especially if you’re financial, but only if you have a sufficient food surplus to still work more “brown” tiles after working enough hills to fulfill your hammer needs. Lakes and coasts are somewhat similar for non-financial leaders, better than nothing but nothing to get excited about, giving two commerce which will never improve from tech or civics. Financial leaders will get three commerce out of these tiles and should give them higher priority, though still less than grasslands. Desert hills can also fall into this category, and are a last resort for cities with no other good shield source. It is also important to remember that as time passes, you gain better trade routes, civics, wonders, city improvements, and other ways to increase the value of seemingly marginal city locations, so a seemingly bad city location could eventually look appealing later on.

Bad Terrain – Worse than Specialists

Desert, tundra, and peaks. Ugh. Try to avoid them unless they contain bonus resources. Tundra forests will ultimately be marginally useful once you get lumbermills, and tundra cottages could be viable but you need a river to be able to build them. That’s all there is to say about these terrains.

Phases of Expansion – How to REX Responsibly

The first phase of expansion starts almost immediately (unless you have a special trick up your sleeve such as religion hogging or one-city warrior rushing) and is the land grab phase. At this point, your goal is to cherry-pick the best city sites and establish a defensible border. Every city you found should have immediately useable resources and/or strategic importance. Expansion should halt before you go over the OCN for your map size (9-10 cities on a standard map for version 1.09). You will deliberately leave many tiles unworked because the tradeoff of colonizing them is too great, given limits on city size and number.

The backfill phase begins gradually as you acquire certain technologies that improve the productivity of less important tiles. These are:

• Civil service (farms on non-river spaces)
• Guilds (workshops give 2 shields)
• Calendar (use of advanced luxury resources)
• Machinery (Mills) and Replaceable parts (Better mills)
• Railroad (Extra shields)
• Communism (Less upkeep, better workshop/watermill)

In addition, the building of courthouses in every city paves the way for responsible expansion above the OCN, and the discovery of galleons will open up previously uncolonized islands.
The lands settled in this phase will be those already claimed in your borders but neglected due to unproductiveness, as well as recently discovered islands and the now-vacant sites of razed cities.

Overlap – Yes it’s a good idea in this game too

One of the vital lessons every civ3 player had to learn was to love overlap. With Civ4, overlap is seen by some as a bogeyman to be avoided if possible. This is generally a mistake in my opinion. The days of CxC city placement are over by decree from the Firaxis programmers, but some overlap is quite viable. The thing to remember is that it takes a long time for a city to reach size 20 (the size needed to work every tile in the radius). And I mean a long while, because happiness and health limits will take their toll if you even try to grow a size 20 city in the medieval era. In addition, certain tiles aren’t valuable anyway. Don’t bother shifting your city location just to encompass an extra plains tile. Instead, cities should be placed to maximize the number of good tiles that can be worked within a reasonable period of time, a goal which is not incompatible with a CxxxC placement scheme, or even a CxxC if it gets you an extra wheat tile.

Production management – Watching cottages grow

When deciding how to manage your cities, the most important question to ask is what is limiting their growth. Cities can, generally speaking, be limited by food, happiness, or space. At different times in the game, different cities will hit different limits.

Food limits and Population Budgeting – Think before you go into food debt

Food is a very common limiting factor for your cities, and the most complex. A city is food-limited if it is prevented from adopting an otherwise appealing tile/specialist-working scheme because it would lead to starvation, and in which the city size is still beneath the unhappiness cap. This is most likely in cities that work large numbers of hills and plains, or that have large numbers of specialists. Under these circumstances, production assignments that produce less than 2 food (specialist or hill, for example) must be paired with assignments that produce surplus food (farm-grassland) to find the true productivity-per-worker. For example, a grassland-hamlet produces 2 commerce per pop point, while a mined grassland-hill produces 1.5 shields, per pop, as it must be paired with another worker assigned to a grassland-farm who would otherwise be doing some other productive job. A mine-plain-hill would produce 1.33 shields, as it requires two grassland-farms to support it. A farmed plains still produces only one shield per worker, underlining how worthless plains are under normal circumstances. These calculations would be different if the best unused food producer available were a farmed floodplain. The exact number can be found by taking:

[yield]/(1+(2-[food_a])/(3-[food_b]))
[yield] = base yield of hammers or commerce
[food_a] = base food yield
[food_b] = food value of the best unused food tile available, usually 3 or 4

[food_b] must be at least 3 or the equation will result in a division by zero. In game terms this indicates a city that is unable to produce any surplus food and is very limited in its ability to utilize tiles of less than 2 food production.

While making a comprehensive graph of various tile types using this formula leads to a large, unwieldy spreadsheet, a few conclusions can be drawn. First, the ability to work food-poor tiles or hire specialists depends greatly on the presence of floodplains. A city with floodplains and a city with only grasslands should not even be considered as being in the same class, as the floodplain city will be able to work tiles that would be unprofitable for the grassland city. Second, there is a real difference between a tile producing 1 food and a tile producing zero food. If supported by grassland-farms, shields from a 1-food producing tile are 150% as valuable as those from a 0-food tile, making a grassland hill more valuable than a plains hill. If supported by floodplain farms, the difference drops to 133%, and if supported by floodplain-farms after biology, it is a meager 116%.

Population Limits and Tile Budgeting – Specialists are finally useful

A second circumstance is when a city has plenty of food but a low population limit due to happiness, and you are unwilling or unable to increase happiness. This tends to happen early in the game before calendar resources, the culture slider, and multiple religious buildings are available. In this case, maximizing output is a simple task of choosing the best possible tiles without utterly breaking the bank on food. It is not necessary to use up all available food under these circumstances, although it is usually advisable if specialists or plains-hills are available. In fact, this is the circumstance in which specialists hold their own even without GPPs, since food is not a consideration. If a city is managed in this way, care must be taken to rearrange it to allow for growth once the happiness limit is raised.

Tile Limits and Improvement Budgeting – Tear down those farms

Finally, cities can be limited by running out of space. If there are no more worthwhile tiles to work, you have no choice but to keep assigning specialists until the food runs out and the city stops growing. At this point, the most important question is which improvements should be built to make the best use of available food. While farms certainly allow the population to keep growing, they are of limited use if the only role for the extra population is to become specialists. A mature town improvement (making 4+ commerce depending on various factors) is probably more valuable than a farm which will allow half a specialist (for 1.5-3 commerce, depending on civics). Additionally, a tile making less than 2 food should only be worked if doing so gives a greater return per food consumed than assigning the worker to be a specialist. This is probably true of mined hills. It is also probably false for pre-guilds workshops or arctic-furs camps, for example, as a 1 to 1 food-shield or 1 to 1.5 food to commerce tradeoff is equivalent to the value you get from a specialist without representation, but without great people points thrown in.

Cottage or Specialist? – Cottage unless you know what you’re doing

This question should be in your mind as you plan every commerce-producing city. While every civ will use some cottages and some specialists, there is a substantial grey area in which decisions must be made. In terms of raw commerce produced, the totals are:

Cottage – 1-4 unimproved, 1-6 (+1 shield) with appropriate tech and civics
Specialist – 3 unimproved, 6 with Representation

So pound for pound, specialists win under a strictly happiness-limited caste-system economy due to the fact that they start out at full capacity. However, this is a fairly specialized situation (Lots of food, population strictly capped by unhappiness). Under a strictly food-limited situation (High population, lots of happiness, limited food), cottages will produce much more commerce as much of the population in a specialist-based city would be devoted to farming to feed the specialists. When deciding how to use one’s population, it is important to consider the strengths and weaknesses of both specialists and cottages.

Cottages:
Take time to reach full capacity
Food-neutral if placed on grassland
Can produce shields under Universal Suffrage
Require the presence of flatlands to work
Need 2 civics and one tech to get full bonuses
Can be pillaged
No special buildings required

Specialists:
Instantly reach full productivity
Only one civic/tech required to get +3 bonus
Don’t make their own food
Require specialist buildings or an extra civic change (Caste System)
Cannot be pillaged
Independent of terrain
Produce Great People

The great people are the real wild card in this decision. Pacifism, the Parthenon, the National Epic, and the Philosophical trait can all multiply the usefulness of specialists. On the other hand, the cost of GPs will increase as time goes by, making the specialists less useful later in the game. In addition, splitting up specialists into multiple cities will slow down the rate of GP production.

Relevant questions to ask yourself include:

• Which GPs would be useful to me right now? (esp. for prophets and scientists)
• What are my leader traits?
• Will the turning point of this game come in the Medieval or Modern era?
• Is there space to build cottages around the city?
• How many wonders are there in the city? How many more will I build?
• Is there another specialist-farm city already hogging all the GPs?
• What civics do I plan to run in the future?
• How safe is this city from pillaging?
• Will the city’s productivity be limited by food, space, or happiness?

Discuss this article on the forum

Gold, Beakers, and Deficit Research

Guide to City Specialization and Land Improvements

Basic Overview

First we need to go over the basics, terms and abbreviations so that everybody is on the same page. There are 3.5 types of specialized cities. I say 3.5 because a few of them are just a specialization of one. They are:

• Great Person Farm City (GP Farm)
• Production City
• Commerce Cities
  • Scientific Commerce City
  • Money (Gold) Commerce City
  • Holy Commerce City
  • Hybrid Commerce City

There are also a number of National Wonders that you can build to enhance your cities specialization. Most will probably go in Production cities, just because it's quicker to build there. We'll discuss which ones are useful for what cities when we get into the detail of each, but let's list the wonders first. All Nation Wonders generate 1 Great Person Points, and the type it favors is listed in parenthesis:

• Forbidden Palace: (Merchant) Reduces maintenance in nearby cities
• Globe Theatre: (Artist) No unhappiness from this city. Can turn 3 citizens into artist
• Hermitage: (Artist) +100% culture in this city
• Heroic Epic: (Artist) +100% military unit production in this city
• Ironworks: (Engineer) +50% hammer with Coal. +50% hammer with Iron. Can turn 3 citizens into Engineer
• Mt. Rushmore: (Artist) -25% War unhappiness from all cities
• National Epic: (Artist) +100% Great People birth rate in this city
• Oxford University: (Scientist) +100% research in this city. Can turn 3 citizens into Scientist
• Red Cross: (Scientist) Free Medic I promotion for units built in this city
• Scotland Yard: (Scientist) Required to train Spy
• Wall Street: (Merchant) +100% gold in this city
• West Point: (Engineer) New units receive +4 experience points

Understanding Commerce Points versus Gold/Money

I needed to add this section, because even I was confused by it. Civ4's use of Gold icons and terminology gets really confusing, so let's explain it because it is critical to city development.

Commerce is the number of gold "coins" and money bags that appear in your city's workable tiles. To prevent confusion, I'm just going to call these Commerce Points (which I'll abbreviate to CPs). A coin equals 1CP and a money bag equals 5 CPs. Foreign trade routes also generate CPs (if somebody wants to explain how this works, please do). All of the CPs generated from your trade routes and tiles are added up and become your City's total Commerce.

Gold or Money is what is generated after you take your CPs and put them on the Science/Gold/Culture Slider. Usually this is set to something like 90% Science, 10% Gold. So if your city generates 100 CPs and is put through the slider, you will get 90 science beakers and 10 actual Gold pieces of Money.

This is important to know because your city buildings effect what happens AFTER the CPs have gone through the slider. Building a bank will increase the Gold produced in the city by 50%, not the Commerce! So if your city makes 100 CPs and you put it through the 10% slider. You will wind up with 10 gold. Multiplied by the 50% bank bonus, you get 15 Gold in Money. You do NOT get 150 in Commerce Points.

Same thing with Science. Constructing buildings or wonders will increase the science output after it's gone through the sliders.


Feeding your City

This part of the strategy was given to me by Wreck, so I can't take credit for it. I will try and explain it though.

The key to getting your city to thrive is to give it just enough food improvements (farms) to grow to maximum size. Everything else is excess and will take away from the specialization. (The GP Farm is the exception)

Every population point in your city consumes 2 food. Fortunately, every population point (up to 20) provides a new worked space in your city's fat cross (workable area around the city) and that in turn provides more food. When you start a city, you get 2 extra food from the city itself (called +2F) plus whatever food is in the first space highlighted or "worked". Usually that is +2F or +3F as well. Ideally, if every square around your city was +2F (grassland), then your city would grow to full size, because every time your city would grow, a new worked spot would provide +2F to cover the -2F needed for the higher population. You would always have the +2F surplus that's given to you when you start your city. (-2F for a population of one, with a +2F for one worked spot plus the +2F from the city itself)

I hope that makes sense!

The problem is, you never have +2F in every square. When you start using areas with only one food (+1F) or no food, then your will start reaching a point where your city no longer grows, because you are eating into that initial +2F surplus you get when you start the city. To get back onto the plus side, you need to use tiles with extra food bonuses, like floodplains or resources ... or build farms (which give +1F on top of your tiles normal production)

But you never want to build more farms than you need, or else you're wasting tiles. Ideally, what you want to aim for is no food surplus when your city hits size 20. That way all tiles are being worked, and you don't have to worry about growing any bigger ... plus you have the maximum amount of tiles are being used for commerce and production. (Note: You will likely have a few cities with unworkable tiles like mountains or ice or worthless tiles like tundra. If this is the case then aim for a city size the is 20 minus how many ever tiles you plan not to work.)

So how to do this ...

The first thing you need to do is count the number of extra food in your fat cross. Remember you get an extra +2F just from the city itself, so count that as well. Any tile that gives you more than 2 food, count as an extra +1F. A floodplain gives you +3F, so that's +1F. Various resources will also give you bonuses. Count the extra amount of food given over 2. Don't count bonuses given by creating a farm. This is just "as-is" bonuses.

Next you need to count the number of spots that have less than 2 food in them. Any Plains spots count as -1F. Deserts, Tundra and Mountains count as -2F. Jungles are a bit tricky, because they take away food bonuses. You should plan on chopping your jungle to make room for a cottage or mill, so count it as if it were normal grassland, hills or plains. (Note: If you are planning for a smaller city because of useless terrain, do not count the terrain you don't plan on improving in your calculations)

Then combine your two numbers. If your number is 0 or greater you are in great shape. If it's below zero, then you will know exactly how many farms you need to add to maximize your land.

So for example, if you have a city built with 6 plains spots, 1 floodplain, and every thing else grassland ... Your extra count would be +2F (city itself) +1F Floodplain for +3F. Your losses would be -1F x 6 (6 Plains) for -6F. Everything else provides 2F, so they don't effect the equation. Add the numbers, and you have a -3F shortage. Build three farms, and you are even. Everything else can go towards specialization.

Building farms on food resources where a farm is needed (corn/wheat/rice) is highly recommended, since it will give +2F on top of it's initial value. That means you have one less farm to build elsewhere. Not to mention you also get the health bonus and resource as well.


Specialized City: The Great Person Farm

Now that you know how to optimize your city's food ... let's look at the lone exception: The Great Person Farm. The sole purpose of the GP Farm is to generate a ton of Great Person points. One way to do that is to build wonders. But the other, easier way to do it is to have a ton of specialists. You can do that by having an extreme abundance of food.

This is usually the second city you build. You will want to find a nice grassy area, preferably with a river running through it and food resources nearby if possible. If you can get an area with some plains hills (2 or 3) in the corner, then even better. If you can get the area covered in forests, then you're really in good shape. Some people would probably disagree with the hills, but I like to try and build wonders if I can get them, since it can't hurt to have some extra GPP points coming in. Also it helps to have some extra production to build health and happiness when you need it.

To improve this area, you are looking at mostly farms. Farm the resources, floodplains and areas around rivers first. When you get a chance, mine the hills to get your production. Then go back and farm everything else.

The forests are very useful for pumping out World Wonders, which give you an extra +2 GP Points. You can try to build some of the earlier wonders and chop rush your forests to make room for your farms. You then get your Wonder bonuses and benefits, plus the GP Points you'll need later.

As for National Wonders, National Epic and it's +100% Great People birth rate is a no-brainer. The Globe Theater is a good one to build as well, as it will eliminate the unhappiness barrier you will constantly run into with your large population size. Some people like to build the Hermitage for it's +100% Culture, but I'm not sure that it's necessary unless you are going for a cultural win.

The City Buildings you build are only going to be the ones you need to boost happiness and healthiness. No need for banks or barracks or the like here. You just want to keep your large population happy and healthy as you will be brushing the maximum frequently.

The real trick to this city is watching the happy numbers and to a lesser extent the healthy numbers. You will usually gain a point every time your population goes up (and it will go up quickly). So the trick is to slam the brakes on population growth as soon as happiness equals unhappiness. Watch these number frequently, like every third turn or so. When you max out, switch your food squares to your production squares and build something to raise the maximum (temples, aqueduct, coliseum, etc). If there are no buildings available to help, then turn off your worked squares and convert them to specialists. You will want to stay at "stagnant" population growth until your maximum happy goes up again. Trading for resources can also help. If needed, use your "stop growth" button to keep from getting too big (Helpful if you have an odd number of food surplus) ... but be sure to turn it back on when you can get bigger. Health is a different story. You can afford to get into the "unhealthy" state, but watch this closely as well, because an unhealthy city will start eating at your food surplus. If you get too unhealthy, your growth will become stagnant and you will be unable to switch over to production without going into negative growth.


Specialized City: The Production City

The Production City is primarily used to build your military units, but can also be used to to create some World Wonders late in the game. I've had a few good production cities end up becoming secondary Great Person farms, just because I was able to build so many world wonders in them. (Granted, this probably won't work in higher difficulty, and it's not recommended to do, since it will hurt the efficiency of your actual GP Farm) Still, this is where all your unit generation comes from. If you plan on being a war monger, you might want a few more of these cities than usual.

A production city should ideally be placed in a city with a lot of hill spaces, but also some grassland as well. An area with a lot of plains and forests will also work as well, although it will take awhile before you can build lumber mills. (Although the benefit of a forest space is that it can't be pillaged!) The problem with a lot of hills is that unless they are grassland, you're not going to get a lot of food to make your city grow. A hills/grassland combo works best, because you can grow farms on the flat areas and mines in the hills ... and you will be able to use the mines almost right away.

To improve, you will want to get a farm or two going to get the population up. Then start a mine or two, and alternate back and forth as you grow. As you would expect, mine resources and farm food spots first. If you calculate out a surplus and have some extra grassland spots, save a few forests for production and make lumber mills later on. For plains terrain production cities, you will likely be building a lot of farms, but each farm will also give you +1P so the production will add up as you grow.

World Wonders are really up to you. If you choose to build any, these would be the cities to do it in. The Three Gorges Dam is a decent production-specific wonder as it will provide power to all your cities. The Kremlin is also nice, as it will be cheaper to rush units. If you get a few good production cities that can turn out units in 4 or 5 turns, you can pump out an army incredibly fast just by producing one turn, and buying the next.

National Wonders should go to your best production cities, and are usually better when paired up. National Epic and West Point are great to have together, as you will turn out some elite units very quickly. Iron Works paired with Red Cross works just as well to produce units quickly with an extra medic promotion. Scotland Yard can also be paired with Iron Works to make a lot of spies. Mount Rushmore is a good candidate to build in a production city, just because it will be built more quickly than in other cities, and it's effects are felt everywhere.

Your city buildings are mostly going to be geared towards increasing production. However, with the added production, it will be fairly easy to build other improvements as well. Try to build forges, factories, etc as soon as the become available. Build Happiness and Health buildings when they are needed. Health is probably your main concern, since most production increasing buildings hurt health. Build military units the rest of the time. If you don't plan on building a large army, then you can afford to build just about whatever you want here, because it will get done fairly quickly.

These cities usually aren't as high maintenance as the GP Farm. Occasionally check in to see that your unhealthiness hasn't exceeded your health maximum. (Otherwise your food calculations won't work!) I usually concentrate on growth when I first start these cities, and then switch it off when it gets to a moderate city size. After that, the hammers will increase every time it grows, so there's no real need to turn on the production emphasis. (Unless you want to hurry up and build a forge/factory/etc)


Specialized City: The Commerce City

The Commerce Cities are probably your most important city to have. Without it, you would be unable to support a military or research new technologies. The key to Commerce Cities are cottages, and building them as soon and as often as you can. Cottages only grow when they are being "worked" so it is important to monitor your food situation as well.

The ideal location for an Commerce City is just about the same as a GP Farm. A lot of grassland, a river touching a lot of squares, a couple of hills, and a number of resources. However, just about any area can be used to create an Commerce city. It's all a matter of balancing your farms and cottages so that your food surplus hits +0F when your city size maxes out. If you are lucky, you will get an area with a lot of grassland (+2F) and you can just build all cottages. If you get a lot of plains, you might have to get a lot of farms to support your cottages. (Worst case scenario, you just make it a production city)

Improving your land just follows the "Feeding your City" section. Build just enough farms to stay in a surplus until city size 21, and then cottage everything else. I like to have a few hills in these cities because production will be awful here. Because you are aiming for flatland/grassland areas, you're going to end up with all farms and cottages. Production needs to come from somewhere if you plan on having a bank, so it's nice to switch to your hill spaces when it's time to build something. As for cottages, aim for the floodplains first. They already give a +3F output, so building there means you get your food advantage, while having that cottage "worked" and growing. If you have an over-abundance of a resource, sometimes it's better to cottage the space and reap the tile benefits while growing the cottage. Mature cottages will generate a lot more cash than the fixed income a camp or plantation will give you. Also try to build on rivers if you can (you may need them for farms), because the river provides some extra commerce.

You may end up changing your improvements a lot in these cities. Start with mines on your hills to begin with, but change them windmills later on. When you get the +1F per square from Biology, you can also turn a lot of farms into cottages. Don't be afraid to throw cottages on your grassland hills either.

World Wonders are a little tough to build here, because you are sacrificing production for commerce. If you can, chop rushing something like the Great Lighthouse or Colossus early on can be beneficial to generate Commerce from water spaces. If you have a lot of trees early on to waste, then you can consider rushing another wonder, but usually these are best left for the production cities.

National Wonders and City Buildings depend on which of the four kinds of Commerce Cities you plan to build. More on these in a bit

Monitoring these cities is a little more difficult than production. Depending on what you are building, you may need to switch over to production-heavy squares when needed. Try to always keep your cottages "worked" or they will not grow. These spots should get preference over anything else. Emphasizing Commerce is probably a good way to go.


Specialized Specialized City: The Scientific-Commerce City

Balancing you Science Commerce cities and Money Making Commerce cities is key. I usually use my best or two best Commerce producers as Science Cities and use all the rest as Money Making Commerce. With a lot of Money Making Cities and Universal Suffrage, I'm able to buy just about anything I need later in the game.

Science Commerce Cities are usually my best Commerce Cities (check the beaker counts in each city). The only difference is, you want to specialize in a lot of science buildings if you can. Because there are your best Commerce cities, production will likely be very low. Try to concentrate on science buildings like Libraries/Universities/Labs/etc first, and Happy and Health Buildings only when you need them. Try to save any forests you have for chop rushing Oxford University. The +100% science is a huge boost to have in your best science city. If you get a Great Scientist, build an Academy here as well.


Specialized Specialized City: The Money Making-Commerce City

Naturally, the best city buildings here are going to be banks, markets, grocers and the like. Anything that increases Gold/Money production. For your water cities, a lighthouse is a must. Once again, it's going to be very difficult to create buildings here because of your loss of production. Aim for Money buildings as soon as they are available and try working on Happiness and Health building the rest of the time.


Specialized Specialized City: The Holy-Commerce City

These are cities that are fortunate enough to found a religion. As soon as you get a Great Priest, build that religions special building and get your religion spread. With the proper civics, you will generate a ton of Money from other cities using your religion.

The best city building improvements here are going to be the same as a Money Making City: banks, markets, grocers, etc, but also the Holy buildings as well. The Temples and Churches should aid your happiness numbers, so you should only check in with your health numbers occasionally to make sure it isn't killing you.

The best National Wonder you can build here is Wall Street, which provides you with 100% Gold. Unless you happen to have another Money Making City that's generating more Gold/Money.


Specialized Specialized City: The Hybrid-Commerce City

These are cities that are basic Commerce City, but also have a lot of production to go along with it. Because most of the cities you create need to be Commerce cities, you wind up with a lot of cities on plains or hills or in a nice mix of terrain. I just count these as both a Production and Commerce city, although it won't be as efficient as a purely specialized city.

Because Commerce is most important, treat this city like a Commerce city. Build cottages where you can, and farm, mine and windmill the rest. If you follow the "Feeding your City" section, you will wind up with a city that has a couple of cottages generating some money, but a lot of added production to boot. This is helpful in times of war when you need a couple different cities turning out units.

But as I said, treat this as a Commerce city, first and foremost. The production bonus is more of a by-product of the terrain.

Discuss this article on the forum

Hammer Overflow

Intermediate Tactics and Gambits

1. Agriculture
2. Animal Husbandry
3. The Wheel
4. Mysticism
5. Mining
6. Bronze Working
7. Meditation
8. Priesthood
9. Pottery
10. Masonry
11. Metal Casting (from Oracle)

• A 3 Food source within the city’s workable area (if the leader is not creative, this may only be the initial 9 tiles!)
• 3 Forests within the city’s workable area (ideally they should be between the 2nd city and the capital, but make sure that when chopped, the hammers go to the 2nd city)
• 3 tiles from capital, maximum (this is to minimize the impact of maintenance costs on research, and to maximize the efficiency of the Workers)

• FARM or PASTURE tiles so each city has at least one 3-food tile
• build ROADS on forest tiles (preferably between cities)
• PRE-CHOP three forests for each city, especially for City 2
• MINE a hill or production resource for each city to provide additional hammers

1. Worker
2. Settler
3. Barracks or Obelisk to within 1 turn of finishing
4. Military Units
5. Oracle when available (Priesthood); whip-finish Barracks or Obelisk so the overflow of hammers goes to the Oracle
6. Chop/Whip the Oracle

1. Worker
2. Barracks or Obelisk to within 1 turn of finishing
3. Military Units
4. Forge when available (Metal Casting); whip-finish Barracks or Obelisk so the overflow goes to the Forge
5. Chop/Whip forge (within 6 turns, remember!)
6. Pyramids once Great Engineer appears

• Plains riverside tile with watermill: 2F 3H 3C
• Grassland riverside tile with watermill: 3F 2H 3C
• Plains tile with workshop: 1F 4H (1C beside river)
• Grassland tile with workshop: 2F 3H (1C beside river)

• Copper
• Iron
• Ivory
• Horses
• Uranium
• Oil
• Aluminum

• Whales are made obsolete by Combustion
• Ivory is made obsolete by Industrialism
• Fur is made obsolete by Plastics

• The Caste System civic for unlimited Artist specialists
• Convert all tile improvements around the three cultural cities to those that produce the most food, allowing you to run more specialists

• The Mercantilism civic for a free specialist
• The Statue of Liberty world wonder for another free specialist
• The Sistine Chapel world wonder for an extra +2 culture per specialist
• Biology for +1 food from each farm

Micromanagement is alive and well in Civ4

This is a thread for those who love micromanaging, for those who don't mind spending 5 minutes working something out just to gain one more beaker, for perfectionist and arguably very anal civ players! This is a place to share all the extreme micromanagement that we use in our games.

The spiritual trait in itself makes quite a few more possible, but here are some basic tricks that i use in every game with every civ. Please feel free to add your own to the list.

Binary science rate

I always keep my science rate either at 0% or at maximum to avoid wasting fractions with bonuses. Here's the reasoning.

Imagine you have 10 commerce in your city. The city has 25% bonus on science with a library and also 25% on gold with a market. Let's say you want a 70% research rate. These numbers are just for the sake of the example; you can use any other numbers you wish. The effect of doing this micromanagement is almost always positive and never negative no matter the numbers used.

By setting science at 70%, you're getting 7 beakers and 3 gold. You get 25% more beakers, and 25% of 7 (rounded down) is 1. You get no extra gold, since 25% of 3 (rounded down) is 0. You're getting a total of 8 beakers and 3 gold per turn. After 10 turns, you'll have 80 beakers and 30 gold.

What you should do instead is run at 100% science 70% of the time, and at 0% science 30% of the time. Then when running science (for 7 out of 10 turns), you'll get 10 beakers. You'll also get 2 extra beakers (25% rounded down). This for a total of 12 beakers. On the turns you run 0% research, you'll get 10 + 2 = 12 gold. After 10 turns, you'll have 12 * 7 = 84 beakers, and 12 * 3 = 36 gold. This is 4 more beakers and 6 more gold than by doing the easy but inefficient 70% science rate all the time.

There's another advantage to doing this. By making sure you run at 0% science for enough turns to be able to afford 100% science for the duration of your entire research for a given tech, you won't get the tech later, but you will give the chance to the AI of getting the tech before you really start researching. The more AIs have the tech, the better bonus you get on your research.

Also, doing this on more than one tech, when the intermediate techs aren't immediately needed (and making sure you have enough accumulated gold for researching all the techs in the chain), you can get the intermediate techs later, which means that the AIs will get less research bonus on them since on less player knows those techs. This can be the difference between being the first civ to reach a critical tech at the end of the chain or coming in second and missing the one-time bonus.

Of course, by doing this, you'll often have large sums of money at hand. This comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Mainly the AI is more likely to demand tribute when it sees you have lots of money in treasury (bad) but you have the ability to rush buy units in a pinch when in dire need (good).

Another advantage of this method is the added flexibility in choosing which tech to research. After running on 0% research for a few turns, you can change your mind about what tech to spend the extra gold on, if your priorities have changed in the mean time. Then you won't have lost any time researching the wrong tech.

Notice that specialists hurt this strategy, especially if you get one free specialist per city and he produces science or gold. This is because the specialist can make gold when running at 100% science, or can make science when running at 0% science. This causes potential wasted fractions for both science and gold in that city, instead of just one kind. However, the strategy always remains useful, even though the gain can be smaller.

There is an important note that i need to add after it was mentioned further down on this thread (thanks guys). On the last turn of researching a tech, you can exploit a bug in how carryover is calculated to your next tech. The gain from exploiting this will usually be larger than the losses from wasted fractions by going to a non-binary research rate on this one turn. Information on the bug can be found here : Technology research explained. Strategy to exploit it can be found here : Tech jumping. This bug has been corrected in patch 1.61.

Before you get your first building that gives a bonus to science or commerce (usually a library, but could be a monastery, a market or even an academy), binary science is of course useless in terms of fractional losses. It's still useful for having more money in the bank for emergencies, and more bonuses for other civs knowing the tech you research. However, these benefits are of limited value. Until you meet other civs (which on maps like archipelago could take a while), here's what you should do instead. Play around with the science slider, and for each setting check your financial advisor to see what the total research is. Pick a setting that gives a multiple of five. If you can't get a multiple of five, then 5n+1 is your best shot, followed by 5n+2. This way, you'll maximize the benefit of prerequisite techs, which give 20% bonus each towards research of the current tech. By picking a multiple of 5, you minimize the fractional loss on this bonus. This doesn't apply to the starting techs, which have no prerequisites. This doesn't apply either when you start meeting civs who might have the tech you're researching, because they add their own bonus, so the total bonus you get may not be a multiple of 20% anymore, and therefore aiming for a multiple of 5 becomes useless.

Commerce and production in packs of 4

I keep my commerce and production per city at multiples of 4 whenever possible to get the most out of 25% and 75% bonuses. If i can't have a multiple of 4, at 75% bonus i aim for 4n+3, if not then 4n+2, and i avoid at all cost 4n+1. At 25% bonus 4n (ideal) > 4n+1 > 4n+2 > 4n+3 (avoid at all cost). If the bonus is 50% or 150%, i aim for a multiple of two (i.e. an even number) in basic commerce/production. If, because of monasteries, the bonus is 45% or something else that's weird to calculate, i try different combinations and choose the one that seems to give the best ratio of total commerce/production to basic commerce/production. At 35%, i just try to get a multiple of 3, minus one for every 21 (i.e. i aim for 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32, 35, 38, 40, 43, etc.), the absolute best being multiples of 20, and the best after that being the numbers right above those, not below.

This implies switching worked tiles whenever there is an overflow that's not a multiple of 4 (for production), or whenever a cottage/etc. upgrades to another level. This can mean switching between cottages and mines, or cottages and forested grasslands, or cottages and hamlets, or river cottages and non-river cottages, etc.

This tile switching can be combined with the binary science rate by using some other tricks to improve results even more. For example, in my science cities i try to use less advanced cottages at 0% science, so that i can grow them without any penalty to my science output. On the other hand, in my cities without as many science bonuses (e.g. no academy), or with more gold bonuses (e.g. market in a holy city), i'll do the opposite and try to use the most advanced cottages while at 0% and grow them while at 100%.

I'll admit to not always doing this perfectly for commerce as it gets a bit tedious and can't always be switched efficiently, but i always check production carefully when i have any kind of bonus.

Keep on working while moving

When needing workers to move their full movement or more, this is what i do to avoid wasting worker turns. I move workers 3 tiles on roads, give them an order and then cancel the order. Next turn, i keep on moving to where i actually need to be. Here's why this is helpful.

Let's say that you need your worker to move 8 tiles through roads for his next task. You can take 2 full turns to move the 8 tiles. Then on his 3rd turn your can make him do his improvement. On the first two turns, he won't have done any improvements at all. A worker turn where all he does is move, if it can be avoided, i consider a waste. Exceptions include moving to forests or hills with no roads, where you can't avoid it.

I would micromanage it this way. On the first turn, i will make him move 3 tiles. He still has 1/2 movement left. Then i ask him to make an improvement there. It could be anything i know i'll need there in the future. Then i cancel the order. Part of the improvement will already be done for later when i come back to it. For example, if i ask for a cottage (4 turns) and cancel, when i come back to it, there will only be 3 turns left to do. Therefore the turn hasn't been wasted.

I'll do the same on turn 2. On turn 3, i'll move the remaining 2 tiles and do the actual improvement that i wanted there. It starts on turn 3 either way, so nothing has been wasted, but improvements on the 2 intermediate tiles have already begun, so i've gained 2 worker turns doing this.

An alternative method is moving to a tile where another worker is making an improvement, then start making the same improvement. Take the worker who was there initially and move him further than the other worker could have reached from his starting position.

Chop, prechop, pre-improve

I don't think i need to explain settler chops anymore, this has been done to death already. This allows for making settlers while still letting your city grow, by producing settlers entirely out of trees. Of course, i use the variant where you switch production in the middle of a turn for maximum efficiency.

Also, whenever you chop (doesn't have to be settlers, this applies to everything), there are some things to keep in mind. First, make sure that your total production for the turn, including chops, doesn't exceed the needs of the current build plus another identical build. For example, when making a swordsman (cost 40 hammers), and he's already at 30/40, you don't want to produce more than 10 (the remaining production needed for the build) + 40 (the production needed for another swordsman). This is because overflow is capped at the current build's cost. For example, when producing something that costs 40 hammers, your total overflow can't exceed 40. To avoid this, you can either switch what the city produces at the start of your turn, or you can stop the chop and finish it later.

In fact, prechopping is a good idea a lot of the time. The best example is when you know you'll get the technology for a critical wonder in a few turns, or a technology that lets you make superior military units that you want to use for an offensive, or any other technology that opens up a new option that requires a lot of production quickly. In such a case, you may want to chop each forest for two turns, then stop and build a road. The forest is still there but almost completely chopped. Whenever the technology arrives, send your workers back to the forests and complete the chops instantly. This trick sometimes allows you to completely build a wonder on the first turn it's available, without using a Great Engineer!

Prechopping is also good if you ever find yourself with workers that have nothing to do anymore. In this case, rather than simply chopping, it's often better to order the building of an improvement over a forest. This gives the idle worker more turns of work to keep himself busy. For example, a forest takes 3 turns to chop, while building a cottage requires 4 turns. Ordering a cottage over a forest thus requires 7 turns, while leaving the forest up even after 6 turns of work. Another alternative is to pre-build a cottage over a farm that you know you'll want transformed later, or any other improvement switch where you still want the current improvement for now but know that you'll want a different one later. This way, whenever you're ready for the other improvement, you can have it right away. Just remember that on hills and in forests, when prebuilding, you should always put down a road so that it's easier to come back later to finish the job.

Prebuilding units

I prebuild an axeman, then before i finish it, i prebuild a swordsman, then before i finish it, i prebuild a spearman. Then i finish them all in the order i started them. Because i finish the first two units later, i'll save on maintenance during the turns where they sit in the build queue, since units in the queue don't cost maintenance, but finished units do. This of course assumes that i don't need the first two units immediately. It also has the convenience of being able to finish a unit or two in one turn each in times of crisis because they're already almost finished. Just be careful not to leave a unit in the queue for more than 10 turns or you'll start losing production on it.

Alternately, you can prebuild a unit for this city's defense, then make a building that takes 10 or less turns to finish while the unit is in queue. This is just as good as actually having the unit defending the city because you can switch back and have it in one turn at the first sight of trouble, but saves you the maintenance cost while you're making your building.

Whip 'til your hands bleed

Pop rushing is way overpowered in this game, and should be abused to the max if you intend to master this game. Part of the reason why it's so overpowered is because of a bad calculation that they haven't even bothered to fix in patch 1.61.

With pop rushing at normal speed, you're supposed to get 30 hammers for every pop spent. That's already pretty good, considering that with a granary, a city only needs about 11 (at level 1) to 31 (at level 21) food to grow back the pop you've spent. Spending 11 food to get 30 hammers is already mighty good, but because of the exploit, it gets even better.

Assuming the building or unit is already started (so you don't get a penalty), what the game does is it checks to find how many base hammers you need to complete the build, and charges you an amount of pop based on this. Let's say there is a forge in your city, or you're using organized religion. This means you have a 25% bonus on production. With 30 base hammers, you then get 38 total hammers (small rounding error, should have been 37). If what you need to complete the build is 38 hammers, the game will only charge you one pop.

However, the game always gives you an amount of hammers that's the smallest multiple of 30 needed to complete the build. This is total hammers, not base hammers. So in the case above, you'll get 60 hammers because 30 wouldn't be enough to complete it. Congratulations, you've just received 60 hammers by expending only 11 food (assuming a size 2 city going down to size 1). That's a grand total of 5.45 hammers per food spent! Tell me that isn't overpowered. Even taking into account that normal hammers would receive a normal 25% bonus, you still need 4.36 normal hammers to equal every food used. No improvement anywhere in the game can provide 4.36 hammers to compete with the 1 food a farm provides.

Pop rushing is so overpowered in this game that i find slavery to be by far the best civic, all branches included. I abuse it to such an extent that in a typical game, until gold rushing comes along, about 70% to 80% of all my production is obtained through this mean, and only about 20% to 30% from actual hammers obtained from tiles. It's so overpowered that a city full of farms becomes a better producer than one full of mines!

The best ways to abuse the system are using 1 pop for 60 hammers when needing 31 to 38 with a 25% bonus (getting 30 hammers for free because of the bug), or using 5 pop to get 210 hammers when needing 181 to 187 with a 25% bonus (getting 60 hammers for free). However, it's good at all levels, as long as you make sure to be at a point that will provide more hammers than you spend pop for.

Because of the unhappiness penalty involved, you don't want to whip much more than once every 10 turns (so the unhappiness has time to wear off). However, because it's so overpowered, you definitely want to use it as soon as the unhappiness penalty wares off, if not earlier. You don't want to waste a single turn that's not being spent on making unhappiness disappear. Yes, this means that you want to be in a constant state of unhappiness due to whipping!

For cities with low food, it will take them time to grow back the population, but little time to get rid of the unhappiness. For those, you ideally want to whip a single pop every 10 turns, and no more. This increases the bonus obtained from the bug, while minimizing your pop spent. Time your production and use your queue to make sure that you have a building that will have just the right amount of production done by the time unhappiness falls down to zero. With a 25% bonus, this means you should have something that needs 31 to 38 hammers to finish. With a 50% bonus, that's 31 to 45 hammers.

For cities that have high food outputs, growing is not a problem, and unhappiness quickly becomes huge. In this case, you want to whip as many pop points as possible every time you whip. This means you should have buildings barely started waiting to be whipped. Those buildings should have somewhere between 1 and 30 hammers done on them, depending on the total hammers required, to ensure the biggest gain possible as described above. For example, a bank requires 200 hammers. Therefore with a 25% bonus you want to whip 5 pop to gain 210 hammers. This can be done by having 181 to 187 hammers left to the build. Therefore you should let normal production of the bank reach 13 to 19 hammers, then put it in the queue until you can whip the rest. Actually, due to a rounding error this will work at 12 hammers as well.

Another thing you want to keep in mind is when to rush. The ideal time is usually not on the very turn where unhappiness disappears, but before that. Ideally, you want to be as close to that point as possible, to keep unhappiness at a minimum and be able to use as many productive tiles as possible for as long as possible. However, there is another factor to consider, one that becomes more significant the more pop you whip in one swoop.

You see, the cost of whipping depends on your city size. Assuming a granary, whipping one pop costs 1 more food for every extra pop your city has before the whip, because it will cost one more food, for example, to go from size 4 to size 5 than it would cost to go from size 3 to size 4. As you whip more pop at a time, however, the effect gets bigger. Whipping 2 pop will cost 2 more food per extra initial level, because each of the two levels you need to grow back will cost 1 extra food. Similarly, whipping 5 pop will cost 5 extra food per initial level, i.e. it will cost 5 more food at level 11 than at level 10, and 10 more food at level 12 than at level 10. This really adds up.

So you want to be at high levels as long as possible to use more tiles, but you want to whip at the lowest level possible. Solution : whip at the end of a level. Use you level to the max, wait until you're right about to jump to the next level, and whip right before this happens, rather than right after it does. Ideally, what you want to have is the following. The last turn before whipping, you want to make just enough food to reach the next level, and not one more. Set you governor to "avoid growth". Then the next turn your city will be at 30/30 food or something like that. Set the governor back to normal, whip and witness your city now at 30/26 or something like that (which is nice because now you know the first two increases will come quickly), and let it grow again.

Note that sometimes it may be better to whip right after growth rather than right before. This depends on too many factors for me to provide precise guidelines, but here are a few pointers. By whipping after growth, you get at least one turn (the one where you click on the whip button) at one size higher. If you whipped more than one pop, you may also (but there's no guarantee) grow some of the levels back one turn earlier. Therefore, by doing this, you're trading away food in exchange for whatever the tile gives you (don't forget to count -2 food for what the tile gives you, because it needs to feed a citizen). If all you intend to get from the tile is 1 food (a grassland farm), then it's never worth it to whip after growth (you'll save more food by whipping before growth than you could gain by whipping after it). If it's production you want from that tile, again it's not worth it, because the food saved otherwise can be turned into lots of more through whipping later on, than what you'd get from the tile. If what you want is commerce, than it might be worth it, since there's no easy way otherwise to turn food into commerce, especially if you're already working all the cottages you can.

Whipping at the middle of a level is never a good thing. Usually it's better at the end of a level, occasionally it may be better at the beginning of a level if you want commerce, but there's never any point in doing it somewhere in the middle. Note that if whipping just after growth, the use of the city governor is still recommended if the growth will lead you into unhappiness. What you want to do then is grow your granary to the max with "avoid growth" turned on. Next turn, turn it off and grow as much as you can. This leads into unhappiness but it has no impact since the instant you get there, you'll whip away the malcontents.

When to do this and when to let your city grow instead? Well, the gist of it is that if in the time it takes for your whipping related unhappiness to drop down to zero, you could grow an extra size and fill that granary again (or at least come close to filling it), then you should do that; otherwise you should whip at this level and not wait for unhappiness to subside. By going down in pop, happiness won't be a problem for a while anyway. Another thing to keep in mind is that it's sometimes preferable to wait until you're at max happiness before whipping; this maximizes usage of tiles at the cost of less whipping (i.e. less abuse). There are also other factors to consider, like whether or not you've got extra 3-food or 2-food tiles you could use, but i'll let you find that out through your own experimentation.

One last thing. Whenever you've got a big overflow from whipping (around 30 hammers at normal speed), it's often a good idea to use that overflow on a worker or settler. This way, you're not wasting your time making them the normal way and getting only 1 hammer per food. Also, workers and settlers make good candidates for the whip for the same reason.

Just how efficient is this tactic? Further in this thread, for one particular example, it was calculated that doing this was 16% more efficient in terms of hammer and commerce than simply using hills and cottages without whipping. The particular example included the following :
- city of size 8 (bigger = less efficient whipping, smaller = more efficient)
- 5 excess food (more food = more efficient whipping, less food = less efficient)
- 2 grassland hills and 2 plains hills available (better tiles = less efficient whipping, worse tiles = more efficient)
- whipping 3 pop at a time (more at a time = less efficient whipping, less at a time = more efficient)

For a nice spreadsheet showing the points that provide more hammers than you paid for at each game speed, see this file graciously provided by Malekithe.

Quick tips

You can finish all worker actions and all other queued actions by pressing Ctrl-A.

If you don't mind re-issuing every worker's task every turn, you may want to use Alt-Escape on one worker at the end of every turn. This will cancel the current task of all workers so that you can re-issue a task next turn. This works well with chopping to ensure that you can switch production to whatever you want to rush before the chop comes in.

When changing from serfdom to something else, make sure to do it after all your workers have done their actions. When switching from organized religion to something else, make sure to wait until after all your chops for the turn have come in, so that they still get the bonus.

If you have units on a tile that need to move, and workers making a road on that tile, make sure to order the completion of the road before you move the units out. Of course, this only matters if they can be moved out to another tile with roads. Obviously, the same thing applies to the tiles they're moving to, not only from.

Basic stuff

I won't even talk about assigning workers manually, assigning citizens manually and switching them around whenever needed, assigning specialists manually and switching them as needed, moving each military unit manually every turn, and so on. I consider these as basic micromanagement that everybody, micromanager or not, should use. These are not, at least in my book, cases of extreme micromanagement!

Anything else that i've forgotten or simply don't know about? Please add any extreme micromanagement trick that you use that's not listed here!

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Optimum Early Growth Strategy

This article is intended to determine the optimum strategy for maximizing production in the first 40 turns of the game. My intention is to quantify the advantages of chopping down forest and to compare different tactical paths in the early game. Tactics to be discussed include the relative advantages of growing your initial city, building workers, improvements, founding your second city, chop-rushing, and queue shuffling. I chose a 40 turn window because in this time it is possible to have two solid cities, with workers improving both, and to be in position to develop a third city if you desire. Over longer periods the mix of tiles, external threats, and other priorities (such as road building and military development) complicate the situation. I’ll contend that the following general conclusions apply for normal speed games:

1. Building worker/worker/settler is optimal for early growth.
2. If you can either build a mine or farm a special resource before chopping you end up equal to straight chopping at turn 40. This implies that you do not need to research Bronze Working first (but do need to have it completed by turn 20).
3. Limited chopping (3 trees) is a key to getting your initial cities set up.
4. Growing your city to size 2 before building a worker carries a significant production penalty.
5. Queue switching will be discussed in a followup post, as will the develop-one-big-city first approach.

Commerce is omitted here, but I contend that is actually reasonable, since significant commerce usually requires worker improvements and thus typically takes off later than this period. As you will see below, any commerce advantage from early growth would have to be balanced against the rather substantial production disadvantage.

I’ll begin with some basics. A size one city has 3 free production and each additional population point (PP) can generate 3 more production (if there are forests or flood plains) before improvements. Each PP uses 2F. Before improvements, this means that

A size 1 city has 4 production
Growing a city by one PP adds 1 production

Chopping trees yields 30P (at normal) and takes 4 turns including travel time.
Costs for a warrior, worker, and settler are 15, 60, and 100 respectively. I’ll discuss epic speed separately, but tree-chopping is even more favored there (45 yield for a forest, workers and settlers are 75 and 125 respectively).

Farms and mines improve basic production, and building them takes a minimum of 5 turns including travel time.
Wheat and corn (with agriculture) and copper (with BW) add 3 production.
Mines add 2 production, as do deer camps (but the base is low on tundra and build times are longer). However, mines clear forests, so the maximum production from a mined tile without a special resource is 4 (gain of +1 over a forest or flood plain).
Normal farms add 1 production - but only on base 2 production sites or flood plains. Creating a farm on a flood plain also takes longer. For this reason I’ll only include the +1P (floodplain+farm and grass/hills+mine) and +3P cases for improvements.

You can already see from the above that starting a second city adds much more production than growing the first city, and that the best improvements are almost as valuable in the short run as founding a second city. Normal improvements increase total production modestly, but only on certain tiles.

No growth cases: in this model the first city build is a worker, usually coupled with researching bronze working. On turn 15 the first worker appears. I then compared the following strategies, all ending with 2 workers, and one settler. I also compared the lucky +3 production improvements and the more typical +1 production improvements. Here are the cases:

1. Chop worker 2, both workers chop settler, improve
2. Chop settler, chop worker2, improve
3. Improve city(+3), chop worker 2, chop settler
4. Improve city (+1), chop worker 2, chop settler
5. Improve city (+3), settler with no chop, worker 2 with no chop.
6. Improve city (+1), settler with no chop, worker 2 with no chop.

Here are the results. Worker turns is the number of turns that you would have workers available to do things by turn 40 other than chop settlers/workers and build the first improvement:

Case A: Worker2 T23, Settler T27, Imp T32, 21 worker turns, 8 overflow
(12 x 4P + 120 from 4 trees = 168)
Case B: Settler T25, Worker2 T31, Imp T36, 13 worker turns, 24 overflow
(16 x 4P + 120 from 4 trees = 184)
Case C: Imp T20, Worker2 T24, Settler T28, 24 worker turns, 6 overflow
(5 x 4P + 8 x 7P + 90 from 3 trees = 166)
Case D: Imp T20, Worker2 T24, Settler T30, 24 worker turns
(5 x 4P + 10 x 5P + 90 from 3 trees = 160)
Case E: Imp T20, Settler T32, Worker2 T40, 15 worker turns
(5 x 4P + 20 x 7P = 160)
Case F: Imp T20, Settler T36, Worker2 T48, 7 worker turns
(5 x 4P + 28 x 5P = 160)

Now, to put these all onto a common metric:

The earliest completion of all workers and settlers is T27. After this point the main city can grow. Later starts are penalized 10P per turn of delay (4P in direct cost and 2P in delayed production from population points 2,3,4 each). Beyond that point the happiness and health limits can be relevant.

The earliest settler is T25. Later starting cities are penalized 10P per turn of delay for the same reason.

Every worker turn that is available after the base tasks above are completed is worth 7.5P (chopping trees; could also be improving for future growth, but that is tile-dependent).
Production overflow is credited to each case as available.

Case A: +145.5 (4 trees)
Case B: +81.5 (4 trees)
Case C: +146 (3 trees)
Case D: +100 (3 trees)
Case E: -87.5 ( 0 trees)
Case F: -307.5 (0 trees)

There is also a difference in the improved city production after the workers and settlers are produced. This is significant for cases A, B, C, E (where there is a good special available).

These cases get stronger production released after turns 32, 36, 28, 40. When this effect is accounted for, Case C (improve a +3P special before chopping) saves a tree and gets the highest yield. Cases A and C are thus very close).

Chopping is strongly favored, and building a second worker before a settler is favored. Improving a special resource is a wash with chopping first, and building a 4 production tile before chopping is disfavored. You don’t need to clearcut for a solid start.

What about growing first? If you have the right tiles available you can grow to size 2 and put out a warrior by turn 10. How does this compare with building a worker first? We’ll focus on Case A above (worker/worker/settler), as it doesn’t rely on a handy wheat or corn. In this case:

Size 2 turn 10, worker 1 T22, worker 2 T28, Settler T34, Imp T37, 10 worker turns, 20 overflow. In all the other cases we assumed the city would start growing on turn 27, while in this case 10 turns of early growth went to the city+unit and it is free to grow again after turn 34. As a result, I give this case 30 extra production for a growth head start (it gets 10 turns of growth by turn 34 while the other cities get 7), and add 24 for the extra production in turns 11 through 34. In effect, the worker-first cities catch up in size while the grow-first city is catching up in workers and settlers. This setup has a rating of +36, e.g. significantly worse than the build-worker first case. In terms of the land grab, it also postpones founding the second city by a potentially crucial 9 turns.

An early delay in building workers (without growing to size 2) costs 25 production/turn: a one turn delay in founding a city and two lost worker turns chopping trees. I hope this is useful; comments/questions most welcome.

Queue swapping is an interesting tactic to combine early growth and tree-chopping. It starts the same as the worker-first strategy, producing a worker on turn 15. On turns 16, 17, 18 the city grows and builds a warrior. On turn 19 the city switches to a worker, with 34 production (4 basic plus 30 from chopping a forest). The second worker appears on turn 23, both chop on turn 27, and one chops on turn 31 while the other produces an improvement on turn 32 (6 overflow). Relative to case A, the founding of the second city is delayed 4 turns, and 4 turns of worker action are lost; this is a 70 production penalty. However, the main city has had 12 extra turns of growth (a 120 production edge.) As a result, queue swapping is a net +193.5 on the original scale, but does burn 5 forests. There is some opportunity cost in losing resources that could be used later (for wonders, barracks, granaries, etc.)

There is also a trick to use only the chopped timber for settlers and workers (extreme queue swapping). Essentially, you set production to settler on the turn the chop is due, manually make the worker chop, and then set production back to warrior. This is more competitive at epic speed, but is an expensive idea on normal speed: settlers cost 100 and forests yield 30, so you would have to chop 6 forests (with 20 overflow) by turn 31 to get out the settler. Relative to normal queue swapping, this method loses 4 worker turns (30 penalty) and gains 4 turns of growth (40 benefit) with 14 extra overflow. The overall net is +217.5, so it scores highest on an absolute scale. If you subtract the opportunity cost of the forests used, however, the relative rankings are different:

No queue swapping +63.5
Normal queue swapping +43.5
Aggressive queue swapping +37.5

Whether you use this technique or not therefore depends in part on how many forests you can use and what else you might do with them.

An alternate approach is to build a large city first and then use the enhanced production to churn out units later. An additional advantage is that such a city produces more early commerce. However, this strategy is significantly weaker in production (and, over the long term, not as strong in commerce as it might appear) because of the power of chopping and improvements. Assume the most favorable case for growth, namely 5 good food resources or flood plains on a river. In this case the capital will grow to size 2,3,4,5 after 8, 14, 19, and 24 turns respectively. By occasionally swapping in some grass/hills/forest it is possible to build 2 warriors and grow to the prince capital happiness limit (5) in 25 turns. The larger city will have 8 production, and if you follow up with worker/worker/settler then you can have worker1(33 turns), worker2(37 turns), and settler (42 turns). There is a commerce edge until the initially smaller capital catches up in size (108), and a production edge (95), assuming the growth pattern is the same. However, there is a 16 turn delay in founding city 2 and you need 9 worker turns past turn 40 to finish the initial builds. The net effect is -132.5 on the original scale, or almost 300 production behind emphasizing settlers and workers early. If anything, this understates the disadvantage of growing onto unimproved tiles. A size 1 city working an improved wheat has almost the same production (7) as a size 5 city working 5 unimproved tiles (8). By the time the big city has produced its first settler, you could have had two medium cities (size 2-3) working improved tiles and could have even founded a third city with supporting worker. Even the commerce edge (roughly one good tech) has to be kept in perspective; a single gold mine has a much bigger long-term yield.

You could get better results by building two workers and then using them to improve tiles while letting the city grow to the happiness limit, then building a settler. The exact results are more complicated to compute because they depend on what tiles are available. In my view, this actually confirms the idea that building a worker first is optimal for a variety of play styles.

Different game speeds can significantly change the benefits of different strategies. The key thing to understand is the different way that units and tech/forests/growth/production scale with speed. As you go from Quick-Normal-Epic-Marathon (Q-N-E-M) the costs for a unit scale as
Q 4/5 - N 1 - E 5/4 - M 2
(for example, the respective costs for a settler are 80, 100, 125, 200).

However, tech costs, city growth, improvement builds, and forests change more quickly with speed. They scale as
Q 2/3 - N 1 - E 3/2 - M 3
(for example, the respective yields for forests and the turns to clear including travel are
Q 20 (3) - N 30 (4) - E 45 (5) - M 90 (9)
This means that Stonehenge always can be gotten with 4 forest (2 with stone) at all speeds,
but the cost in forests for a settler is
Q=4 N=3.33 E=2.78 M=2.22
and the time to build a settler with the basic 4 production of a city is
Q=20 N=25 E=32 M=50

With an important exception for technology speed at high difficulty levels and marathon, you can therefore expect the following
relative trends. I'll post details for other speeds if people are interested.

1) In quick games cities grow rapidly and the yield from tree-cutting is smaller. The rapid pace of technology also means that workers are more flexible - it is very likely that you can improve special resources immediately upon founding a new city. This makes improvements more powerful, and dramatically reduces the differential impact of chopping on early production. If you start with good special resources you can do better by improving the first one (after you have a worker) than you can by focusing on tree-cutting (an improved wheat has a higher return than a forest cut after 7 turns). Worker-worker-settler is still the preferred sequence, but clearcutters will quickly run out of forests. Building a big city before a settler still fares worse than building a worker first, since once the tiles are improved the capital will grow to the happiness/health limit almost immediately. Note that because cities grow very fast (as quickly as three turns per population), having extra workers in the early game will have a large impact on production; you'll benefit from hooking up special resources to raise the health and happiness caps. Peaceful builders and tree-huggers will probably like this speed.

2) In epic games the technology speed is still fast enough that it doesn't play the huge role that it will at marathon. Worker-worker-settler is strongly preferred to other build sequences. Trees provide so many hammers that queue swapping is extremely effective, and can be used to put out early warriors, etc. without a large production penalty. You may even want to do a reverse queue swap, putting a warrior in the build queue when you want to get it out quickly and then crediting the overflow to the worker or settler. Remember that the costs are not exact multiples of timber yields, so that you want 200 production going to your second worker+settler, not the 180 you'd get just from cutting four trees (so you will want to have 5 turns of native production applied to units, not growth, to avoid using up too many of your valuable forests.)

3) In principle you might expect marathon games to be a simple extension of the above trends, and a theoretical analysis supports that. But the glacial pace of research has interesting consequences - especially at high difficulty levels. When you found your first city and choose your first tech on a normal start, you'll see something like the following for bronze working (BW) and a Worker(W) at Prince:
Quick BW=9,W=12 turns
Normal BW=13, W=15 turns
Epic BW=21, W=19 turns
Marathon BW=49, W=30 turns. At Marathon/Deity, it take 67 turns to get bronze working....
(If you have a special start tile the worker time will be less, and if you have commerce on your second tile the tech time will be less. You can usually shuffle the worked tile in that case so that the arrival of the first worker and getting BW happens at the same time on epic).

What this means is that unless you either prioritize commerce or are extremely careful you will have extended stretches where your workers, and cities, have absolutely nothing useful to do. It is entirely plausible that it will take you 150+ turns before you can actually use that pig next to your starting city, and even improvement build times are long (15 turns for farm, etc.) As a result, financial leaders have a significant production edge, and coastal production, specials with commerce, etc. will dramatically speed up city development.
Timber is useful for a lot of things, and you should think carefully about how you want to spend it. The AIs don't tend to use it for wonders, for instance, and it does save a lot of time for buildings as well. Unless you can speed up the tech, there is no gain in starting with a worker until you can time their arrival to coincide with a useful task - you might as well spend the first 20 turns getting a warrior out, unless there is a lovely gold mine next door.

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Religions in Emperor and Above - Observations and Thoughts

First of all, we all know that it is nearly impossible to found a religion ourselves in higher difficulties, since the AI has a great advantage, such as research, especially at the beginning. Diplomacy in high difficulties seems always narrow down to clashes between a few prominent religions, until Liberalism (free religion) is well adopted by every Civ. If one makes good use of religious diplomacy, victory of all kinds is not very far away.

Here are a few AI's behavior patterns that I observed (mostly on Emperor and above, Terra or Pangea). Hopefully they are useful to you:

1) Due to AI's rapid road paving / missionary production efficiency, Buddhism and Hinduism usually becomes 2 prominent religions of the world, before the other religions are even founded.

Usually after the early phase of expansion, one would end up with having strong Buddhism and Hinduism neighbors. Then it becomes obvious -- pick one of the two religions, make good friends and trading partners, and expand towards the other.

The religion modifier goes as high as +8 on religion-minded leaders, such as Cyrus, Isabella and Mansa Musa. Isabella is particularly a fine religious ally, as she is aggressive enough to agree to war against civs of a different faith with you. Mansa Musa, on the other hand, would only agree if you give him multiple expensive techs.

2) During peace times, AI always switch to "Organized religion" to make us of its 25% building rate bonus in cities with the state religion. This civic is very nice indeed, and all you need is Monotheism, which you can easily trade from the AIs.

3) Sometimes one religion spreads so fast that every single civ in the world is in the big family, and they are usually happy among each other, much happier than to the player's Civ. This is not going to last forever, though... (see below)

4) The AI tend to switch religion to the one founded by itself, but usually comply with the international trend until a war breaks out between another civ of the same faith. This is quite important, as when you attack a Civ of the same faith, you would get -1 "You declared war on our friend!" modifier from all Civs of the same religion. But you won't after it switches to its own religion.

While the AI is losing the war and its own holy city. It will again switch religion to match the environment. Too late!

5) While generally speaking, leaders of the same religion almost always become good friend over time, it is possible to bribe the expansion-minded (and falling in tech) leaders to go against civs with the same faith since ancient times. Some examples are:

• Montezuma of Aztec
• Genghis Khan of Mongol
• Alexander of Greece
• Victoria of England
• Tokugawa of Japan

Chances are some of them are on the map. This means even if everyone is everyone's friend, I can still stir a world war. Leaders will convert to their own founded religion, causing even more conflicts and military actions promoted (in secret) by nobody else than the player him/herself.

6) Peace loving leaders are extremely reluctant to go after anybody who shares the same religion with them. This means that you don't have to produce army during peace times when you are bordered with them only. Also, when you attack their neighbors, you don't have to worry about backstabbing because they can't choose which friend to help.

7) If there are multiple war-loving leaders (such as Montezuma and Alexander), it is quite important to keep them busy with somebody else as early as possible. They are like mercenaries, waiting for a bid. Even if they are pleased with you, they will still go after you if they have nothing to do with their neighbors.

8) Whenever possible, bribe AIs to war is a great idea even if it costs you your most advanced techs. Every single war put a -3 modifier on relationship permanently, so you are pretty much guaranteed of a life-long enemy between the two, which is a great thing to you. They won't come after you now, and you can come after them while they are exhausted.

However, you have to have a tech lead relative to them in order to bribe them. In order to have a tech lead, you have to have larger, juicier lands to start on, and good strategies to make money fast. There are many good posts here covering these aspects.

9) Aligning with the No.1 Civ, or the No. 2 Civ (while you are No.1) is not necessarily a bad idea when you are still not prepared in terms of military. Bribe someone to attack them as soon as possible, though. They will give you that -1 "You brought as a war ally!", but they are usually still pleased with you since you share the same religion.

10) If you are not using a Creative leader, during the very early game, you probably want to delay the declaration of a state religion so non-capitol cities with non-state religions can have their border expanded to level 2 (harvest diameter) first.

No state religion:
   Holy city of any religion: 5 culture / turn
   City with any religion: 1 culture / turn, it stacks up

With state religion:
   Holy city of state religion: 5 culture / turn
   Holy city of non-state religion: no effect
   City with state religion: 1 culture / turn, plus 1 happiness
   City with non-state religion: no effect

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Specialist Economy - Post Emancipation Tech Success

Specialization of Cities

One of the biggest ways Civ4 is different from Civ3 is in the way we choose locations for cities.

In Civ3, city placement was a sort of checklist, and the cities with the most checks were usually the best. Fresh water, check. Hills/mountains for production, check. Food tiles for growth, check. Resources, check. On the coast, check. And so on; you wanted the best checklist cities possible because with the exception of cultural victory cities and maybe super science cities (with double sci wonders), all cities really did the same thing. This is not so in Civ4, and when I first made the transition the need to specialize cities was one of the things that was most confusing to me. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Why Specialize?

There are a number of factors that force us to specialize our cities. They are, in no particular order:

• Great People system
  The nature of GP makes it far more beneficial to have one city produce a ton of GPP than have a bunch of cities all make a little bit of GPP.
• Roads no longer produce commerce.
  In Civ3, we didn't need to make commerce-specific cities because every large, fully roaded (or RRed) city produced a lot of commerce on its own. This is not so in Civ4; you need to build a specific improvement (cottage) in order to increase a tile's commerce.
• National wonder complement each other, but you can only build 2 per city.
  
  It is a great idea to have Heroic Epic and West Point in the same city; it will build military units faster and give them bonus experience to boot. Since the national wonders usually give a percent benefit to one aspect of a city's production, it obviously behooves us to ensure that the aspect receiving the bonus is as high as possible.
• # of city upkeep forces us to limit the number of cities we found.
  This is probably the biggest difference from Civ3. There was a penalty from founding too many cities in Civ3 (corruption), but it was nowhere near as crippling as the penalty is in Civ4. Since we are severely limited in the number of cities we can make, we obviously want to make the most of those cities. (One thing that strikes me as odd about this is the dissolution of colonies in Civ4. If the game is designed to discourage founding a city specifically to get an important resource, shouldn't there be a built in alternative?)
• Culture provides a defensive bonus.
  
  This means that in addition to any logistical benefits, a few high culture cities will always be easier to defend than a horde of low culture cities.
• Religion!
  Simply put it is easier to spread religion to all of your cities if you have less cities.

So now that we have a good idea of why it specializing is good, let's look at the three basic types of cities.

The House of Commerce, aka Moneybag City, Goldsville

Essentially, this is a city that is designed to get as much commerce as possible. You will end up building cottages on almost every tile in the city's fat t, but it is important to have enough food to ensure that the city grows quickly. This city will have lots of gold (and therefore science), so it behooves you to build +% gold/science improvements here (depending on what you are doing at the time)!

When looking for places for commerce cities, remember that while eventual gold production is important, you also need to consider the speed at which the city will reach its optimal size. You could have the highest gold city in the world and it would be useless if it takes all game to get to size 6.

You have to balance this need for food with early cottage placement, however. Cottages take a long time to grow fully, and need to be worked in order to grow. You need to be wary of the opposite of the high-gold-no-people commerce city; the high-people-no-towns commerce city. Balance working food tiles and cottages while your commerce city grows.

Consider rivers carefully. Rivers provide a bonus to both commerce and, through farming, food. You need to decide whether to use a river for your commerce city or for...

The GP Farm aka Specialistville, Wondertown.

This city is built on pure population, converted into specialists to produce GPP. In low levels you can usually count on wonders to produce a good amount of GPP, but specialists are more reliably attainable and above all, convertible.

Look for fertile ground with lots of bonus food. If you also want to get wonders for GPP, you will need a good amount of production as well, so some hills would probably be nice too.

Obviously, it would be a good idea to get +GPP improvements/wonders here. National Epic should go here for sure.

One more thing - never put super-specialists in your GP Farm. GP Farms usually produce a fair amount of culture/beakers/commerce just by having so many specialists, but never forget that their primary purpose is making GP. Put the super-specialists in a place that could really use the extra production, like...

The Factory, aka Anviltown, Hill-Land, Detroit

What the house of commerce is for money and the GP farm is for food, the factory is for production. This city, when fully developed, should be capable of producing a ton of hammers per turn, and be fully endowed with national wonders that increase either production or the benefits of it. I have already mentioned my personal favorite combination of national wonders for the factory: Heroic Epic and West Point. Other combinations are possible too, most using Iron Works in some way. It is sometimes necessary to distinguish between a military factory and a wonder/SS/other factory.

What I said about the commerce city and growth holds true for the factory as well; you need to emphasis production, yes, but the city also has to grow. Remember, you can put a factory on the coast too, for mass production of ships.

Obviously, it is very difficult to have every single city in your empire be specialized in one direction (especially if you didn't found the cities). Use common sense and don't be too afraid to found a hybrid.

In addition to knowing what sort of cities you can build, you should know when to go for what type. It is when deciding which strategy to go for that Civ4 really begins to shine; there are so many considerations and layers of strategy that it is impossible to say what is best for every situation, but I think I can spew out some general guidelines:

Consider your leader traits when deciding where to found your core! A financial civ should make getting a commerce city a priority; a philosophical leader should seriously consider a GP farm almost immediately. It is important to maximize your benefit from both of your leader's traits.

Choose your civics carefully, as to maximize your advantages and minimize your disadvantages. If your GP farm is booming, but your commerce city is lagging behind (and thus slowing your research), you should seriously consider Representation. Don't become addicted to any one civic! They are all viable, and will remain so throughout the game (except for the civics that Emancipation kind of kills.)

Have an overall plan! I cannot stress this enough. In Civ4, more than ever, it is important to start reaching for your eventual goals at the beginning of the game. You want some flexibility of course; it doesn't work to be hell-bent on military conquest and then discover you lack Copper and Iron. But whenever you found a city, ask yourself, "How does this city help me reach my overall goal?"

I hope you guys find this article helpful.

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Subsidies and Aggressive Trading Practices

The following is a strategy for getting the most out of your GPT trades with the AI.

Have you often been in annoying situations with the AI, wanting to sell off a resource, but getting only a pittance in return? Is silk really worth only 3 GPT?

It turns out that the AI also values these resources more than they are paying, but are limited to only giving away as much GPT as they are currently making in profit. One of the most striking features of this is the fact that the AI always seems be willing to trade all of its available GPT for your goods, whether it is 1 or 5. How would you like to make 7, 9, or 12 GPT regularly per resource.

Well now you can! All it takes is a little patience, and plenty of extra goods, and you'll be in bushiness.

The primary limit on an AI's GPT trading is simply the size of their positive cash-flow that turn. There is a secondary limit based on how much they like you, but you don't often hit it. In order to trade as much GPT as possible with the AI, you have to make sure that they have enough GPT to cover the transaction. How do you do this? Subsidize them!

Subsidies: If you gift GPT to an AI in negotiations, it will (as you might expect) raise their GPT in turn. Gift an AI GPT in small increments until their Available GPT stops increasing. You have just determined their trading limit, and they will now be willing to buy resources off you at top dollar.

Here is an example scenario:
Suppose I was trading with the Persians, and they are listed as having 4 Available GPT.

• I gift them 2 GPT, and their Available-GPT rises to 6.
• I gift them 2 GPT again, and now their Available-GPT rises to 7.

  Where did the money go?
  They are simply not willing to trade at 8 GPT; their limit is 7.

• I now sell them Furs for 7 GPT, and now their Available-GPT is at 1.
• I gift them 7 GPT, and their Available goes to 7.
• I sell them Rice for 7GPT, and their Available is down to 1 again.
• I see that I can only sell 1 more resource to them, Silk, and so I gift them 6 GPT. Their Available is at 7.
• I sell them the Silk for 7 GPT, and call it a day.

You are all probably noticing that throughout this entire affair, I'm only making a profit of 4 GPT while selling them 3 resources. I'm effectively giving them 2 resources for free! That is however, why it is called a subsidy. You don't make a profit just yet.

Making your profit: For the first 10 turns of your trading agreement, you'll be getting the short end of the stick. That now changes, because after 10 turns, you can cancel trade agreements! You are currently subsidizing the purchase of your goods at a cost of 17 GPT, but once the 10 turn limit expires, you can cancel these. Now, you are turning a nice healthy profit of 21 GPT from resource trading, not too shabby. The best part comes from the fact that you can do this with every civilization, resource sourpusses permitting. I have personally been able to break 100 GPT in trade-profits using this method.

Things to watch for:

• If your potential partner's Available GPT is listed as 0, they are probably in deficit spending. Don't bother trading with them, since you'll have to subsidize them out of their deficit before negotiations can even begin, and you have no idea how much that's going to take. 5 GPT? 10? You have no way of knowing, and it will be expensive no matter what.
• You yourself need a positive cash-flow before you can gift people GPT. To be on the safe side, set your science spending to 0% before entering negotiations.
• Always sell to the highest bidder. Search around for who has the highest trading limit, and choose to trade with them first. This will make sure that you get the most out of the sale of your resources. Trading limits correlate pretty strongly with the Civ's attitude towards you, so you can be making 12-15 GPT per resource from your close allies.
• As nations become friendlier with you over time, their trading limits will begin to rise. If you suspect this to be the case, you can cancel your trades and renegotiate. Their Available GPT will rise in accordance with their suddenly reduced expenses, and will still be available to you for buying your goods. If, in the Persian example, after a while the trading limit rises to 8, you renegotiate to sell them the first two resources for 8 GPT apiece, but you will probably have to subsidize the third. No problem there, since subsidies are a 0 net-loss, so for the first 10 turns, you will just be making 21 GPT. Once that's up, you can cancel the subsidy and come up to 24 GPT, making the whole thing worthwhile.

I do not believe this to be too much of an exploit, since the AIs have their own personal spending limits anyway, and are perfectly willing to pay that much for the resource. Furthermore, it seems stupid in retrospect to be selling your wheat off for 1 or 2 GPT. This tactic simply gets the AI to trade at their maximum trading level for as many resources as you have to offer. Now it might be theoretically possible to cause serious economic harm to a Civ when you cut off their subsidies, but that's why this is called Aggressive Trading. You make them trade to their very limit.

Additional Uses for Subsidies:

1. Extortion: (Edit: This has not been thoroughly tested and appears to deliver rather poorer results were originally though.)
All GPT deals are restricted by the amount of Available GPT the AI has in stock. Subsidizing allows you to bypass this limit, and so opens up a new world of options, namely "Coercive Bargaining" or "Protection Fees".
How to make use of this?

• Get a Large and Threatening(tm) army.
• Look for a weak Civ somewhere in the world, who you think might like to "stay in bushiness", but might be too much hassle to "take care of" yourself.
• Having selected your victim, gift them enough gold up to their trading limit, to ease open their finances.
• Demand a repayment in kind, but for as large a sum as possible (you are limited to their trade-limit).
• If the first "trade" was not enough, try this again and again to see how much you can squeeze out of the little sucker. You may have to keep pumping them up with GPT so that they can afford your demands. (Tests show that AIs rarely if ever agreed to demands twice in a row. Yields are probably limited to 1 trading-limit's worth.)
• After 10 turns are up, go ahead and cancel your side of the bargain, but their tribute will still be coming in.

I won't even pretend this is not an exploit, since any sensible player would cancel their tribute to an AI guilt-free after 10 turns were up. This will theoretically allow you to soak your victim nations for a significantly larger chunk of change than you could normally, since a 0GPT in diplomacy can't limit the tribute. The AI will faithfully send it's moneys to you basically forever once the deal is made, ending only if one of you declares war on the other. The best part about this is that you don't need to actually have any other resources than just a large military. Your relationship may suffer, but do you really care? If they don't like paying, then you can just tax them like normal citizens of your empire (after you 'assist' their citizenship).

Edit: Many questions have come up as to "How do I cancel my deals?". Due to some bug, it seems to be impossible to cancel a GPT loan in the diplomacy window with another Civ (it prompts to change the amount given, but then does nothing). To cancel these deals, you go to your foreign advisor (F3), and look under the "Active" section. This will show all current deals you have, and mousing over them will reveal how many turns until they can be cancelled. Click on a matured deal and you will be asked whether you wish to cancel it (y/n).

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The Hybrid Economy

• most common improvements: farms and cottages
• beaker source: primarily commerce, some specialists
• espionage source: specialists
• gold source: specialists
• optimal slider position: 100% science
• best civics: Representation, Free Speech, Caste System
• best traits: Financial, Philosophical

• high degree of city specialization
• no economic crash with switch to Emancipation
• high GPP production
• not as much micromanaging as a Specialist Economy
• high degree of predictability in Great People produced

• using the culture for happiness causes research to slow down, but not as much as a Cottage Economy
• more micromanaging than a Cottage Economy
• unable to use Slavery Civic after Caste System to boost production

Triangle Diplomacy

Many new players, it seems, do not practice diplomacy in an organized, coherent way but in a "spur of the moment" haphazard way. For example, an AI request will come up which asks you to "stop trade with someone" or "give tribute/help", "declare war", etc and I think many beginners just decide at the moment what "feels" best with no long term planning. But this isn't the best or most interesting approach.

What you should do, upon founding your empire and exploring the land is to see who and where the AI Civs are located and how powerful they are, then decide who is going to be your your long-term ally. Then using the F4 screen, figure out who another Civ that the potential ally really likes (and presumably that third civ likes back) that you also would want as an ally. Then you will attempt to (as much as possible) get relations between you and these two Civs as high as possible, forsaking all others when necessary. The key to remember is that you must ally with two Civs that themselves are extremely friendly to another thus avoiding the "trading with enemy" penalty and also the awkward situation where each ally asks you to war on the other! This usually but not necessarily requires you to have the same official religion as these other two Civs.

And that means that when they ask for reasonable tribute, you give it. That means when they ask you to stop trade with those outside the triangle, you do it. That means when they ask you to join in war, you do it if it is safe to do so (and it is a huge bonus to do it as it prevents the -1 you failed to help us in war but rather gives +1to4 for mutual struggle). Realize though that when you do that, that other Civ will be a lifelong enemy most likely but that okay. Of course, it means that relations with some of those Civs outside of the triangle will probably be irreparably harmed but it is much better to have strong friends and strong haters than to have everyone cautious or annoyed at you.

Now it is important to avoid having "backstabbing" or "rogue" or particularly warlike nations in the triangle. Although all AIs will backstab if you are too weak or present too much of a target (so in all cases having a credible military is a must), some do it much more than others. Montezuma and Isabella come to mind in most cases. Avoiding warlike civs is also good because you might otherwise be forced into too many wars and being a pariah nation yourself.

But it is important to also realize that you can shift or change the triangle as the situation unfolds. Unless you're playing with very few Civs, if you're playing with 8 or more, its unlikely that you have great relations within the triangle but all others hating you. Say you have a triangle with A and B but also have good relations with C and A also have good relations with C. You may then decide to have C in the triangle and drop B. So in this way, you can shift the triangle from time to time. But by focusing on two at a time, you will find the game proceeds much better than trying to equally please and equally displease everyone.

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Vocum Sineratio: Dona Eis Relions

In Beyond the Sword Choose Religions is a custom game option that removes the relationship between a technology and the religion specific to it. If you are the first to discover a religious technology, you may choose which religion you found (save only that you may not duplicate an existing religion). Some of the AI Leaders have a preferred religion as well (defined in CIV4LeaderHeadInfo.xml), and will select accordingly. Those leaders who do not have a preferred religion defined will default to the religion normally associated with the technology.

In Beyond the Sword, the bias in favor of the human player has been removed. Also, the turn clock is disabled if you are playing an Advanced Start custom game. Furthermore, your leader's preference takes precedence over your own, when the religions are being dealt out.

Very rarely, you will see the announcement that you have founded a religion, and immediately find that it has spread to other cities. This demonstrates the timing of the game mechanics; after you hit end turn, your research occurs, followed shortly thereafter by CvCity::doReligion. The technology splash screen appears after all of this, at the beginning of your subsequent turn. With truly unfortunate timing (and rather dubious prioritization), you could theoretically find that - having founded a religion - you have a converted city (immediate spread from the holy city) but ruins where your holy city may have briefly stood (were it razed by one of the opposing players.

Two different distance terms are used in CIV. Step distance treats diagonals as one unit of distance. Plot distance treats them as roughly 1.5. When you watch a city expand its cultural borders, you are seeing it expand using plot distance

1. The city has constructed a monastery
2. You are running the Organized Religion civic

walkerjks dedicated a post to religious strategy

Sirian wakes the Hydra

DaveMcW's single screenshot response to Immaculate's challenge

Vocum Sineratio: Evaluating Production

Introduction:

Behold a baseline production mega-city:

What, don't see it?

The power of State Property is no great secret, and I don't expect that 63 base production is any kind of record.

But when I realized that this football field generates more hammers than each of the production centers in my last game, I became convinced that I didn't understand how production tradeoffs worked.

Simplifying Assumptions

In this analysis, I'll be working backwards through time, from the modern era to the past.

So for the moment, I assume State Property, and all the techs needed to maximize the yield of improvements. This means big mature cities without happiness or health concerns.

Furthermore, I'm assuming cities with a production specialization. In other words, the prime directive is to maximize hammers; commerce serves only as a tie breaker, GP points matter not a whit.

I'm also assuming an effectively infinite capacity for Engineer specialists. In other words, the analysis is going to start to break down if you are dealing with cities sustaining more than 46 food per turn (52 in the ironworks city). I don't expect this to matter in practice.

Resources occasionally appear in worked mines - I've no idea how often, or what the relative probabilities are of getting strategic vs luxury resources, so I'm going to pretend that this happens infrequently enough that it can be safely ignored.

Food

With 40 food available in the fat cross, distributed entirely on good tiles, our production yield is 63.

It really doesn't matter much how that food is distributed. For example, you still get 63 hammers if you replace a plains tile with a grassland hill.

Also note that at this point, we are counting unimproved food.

The presence of desert, mountains, ocean, and other junk tiles reduces the productive population. A more general equation would be 2 * pop food yields 3 * ( pop + 1 ) hammers.

For each two food beyond 40, you get two more hammers by running an engineer specialist.

Alas, an additional one food beyond forty doesn't do so well; you get two hammers per turn when you are starving, and no hammers when you are growing. If you actually starve away a pop point, the food bar stays empty, so the growing phase is approximately twice as long as the starvation phase. Under these conditions, an extra food is worth 2/3 of a hammer, on average.

When you do have an excess of food, there's often an opportunity to eek out an extra hammer by retooling your improvements. The banana plantation, which brings you to 42 food (65 hammers), can be replaced by a banana workshop ( 40 food, 66 hammers).

Farms

With less than 40 food available, production suffers...

The two extra plains tiles give us 38 food as our base. To correct for this, we need to replace a workshop with a farm. We're giving up three hammers to get two food in return, for a net of -1H/2F. As usual, it doesn't matter whether you replace a grassland workshop or a plains workshop - the net yield is the same.

Farm here refers to any +2F improvement - deer camps, sheep pastures, banana plantations are Farms. They just have some extra vigorish, so prioritize hooking up these resources over irrigating land, when necessary.

Watermills

In the previous section, I told a small fib....

Same topology, but I'm back to 63 hammers. The big advantage of a flat stretch of river is that it can be used for either a workshop or a watermill, allowing you to add food to a city without cutting production.

So for cities lacking food, each watermill that you can put down is equivalent to an extra food. Count your watermills carefully; watermills can't be built on corners, and they can't share the same edge of river. They can be adjacent when the river zig zags.

For counting purposes, cow pastures are potential watermills, as the tradeoff between the pasture and a workshop is the same as the tradeoff between the watermill and the workshop. The vigorish is different in each case - watermilling cows on a river is an option if you prefer commerce to the resource.

Hills

Surprise! Adding hills to a city is neutral, and it's possible to have too many hills.

Changing these workshops to mines on hills is production neutral, because we had watermills in reserve. So we're doing ok so far, but we've run out of watermills.

Two more hills means the loss of two more food. The net loss is one hammer, as we switch from three workshops to two mines and a farm.

Again, we need to irrigate, and we lose another hammer.

So up to this point, we are paying 1 hammer for every two food missing in the city.

Busted. With no more room to irrigate, we have to break out the windmills. In effect, we've converted three workshops to three windmills, which is just a lousy deal. From here on out, you lose one hammer for each food you lose.

Mirages

You have to exercise some care when counting food in tiles that you cannot improve.

These tiles look, from a food perspective, as though they are equivalent to a pair of grassland tiles. However, the restriction against improving an oasis means that tile represents one hammer, rather than three. In other words, you lose two hammers working that tile (which is still better than not working it, but not much).

A lake, when you have a lighthouse, is an Oasis. A lake without a lighthouse is junk.

This is my favorite illusion. It looks like you have gained a hammer; instead of nine hammers courtesy of three grassland workshops, you have ten hammers at the same total food.

What's actually going on is that you have two bonus food resources (+2P) supporting a farm (-1P)! ( 10P+6F = 6P+10F ). If you have to have a farm tile, you do want to work it, but it's not as good as a Mine.

A windmill on a desert hill is an Oasis.

Resources

Each strategic resource in the fat cross adds one to your production. In a production city, Ivory is a strategic resource, uranium is not (uranium is terrain).

Each metal in your fat cross adds an additional one to your production. The four strategic metals are Aluminum, Coal, Copper, and Iron. The non-strategic metals are Corn (with irrigation), Wheat (with irrigation), and Fish (with lighthouse).

Beware of double counting: both corn and iron, when improved, give five production over the base tile. But we already counted one for the corn when trying to get the food to balance; it would be an error to count corn as food and a strategic resource and metal.

Don't forget to an extra hammer or two if the city tile has a goodie.

Improvements

In production cities, improvements are properly classified by the F+P yield they give.

You get +3 from Mines. Watermills and workshops are mines, as are the funny looking irrigation improvements one applies to corn, rice, and wheat. The city tile itself, which yields two food and a hammer without using up any food, is a Mine.

You get +2 from Farms. You don't mine gold in a production city, you farm it. Likewise you are farming horses, stone and oil - hook them up on the flats, but if you find them on a hill you would rather mine them.

You get +1 from Wineries, which include ivory camps, marble quarries, sugar and spice plantations. Mining these is a better choice if you have that option, farming them a better choice when you have that option. When you have neither option, you take what you can get.

Evaluation

Just add it up. Three for every mine, two for every farm, one for every winery, one for every surplus food, one for each strategic resource, one more for each metal. Ignore any tile that isn't giving you one of those things.

References

• The Complete Guide to Terrain, Improvements...

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Vocum Sineratio: The Whip

It may help to understand how the game is keeping track of things under the covers. Each city has a HurryAngerTimer - when you crack the whip, you add 10 turns to the timer. When calculating the amount of unhappiness your oppression has caused, the game divides the HurryAngerTimer by the duration of the whip penalty, rounding up.

So, at normal speeds, if the timer is at 17 turns, that always means an oppression penalty of 2 - it doesn't matter if you got there by whipping twice on turn 0, then hitting end turn three times, or if instead you whipped on turn zero, hit end turn three times, then whipped again.

Details of experiments to reveal how the granary works.

Experiments on how using the whip affects commerce cities

More math experiments investigating efficient whipping

Details the slavery exploits in 1.61

The Realms Beyond crowd discusses variant rules to bring the whip back under control

A zipped excel spreadsheet which calculates whip efficiency

Blake's whipping guidelines, with case studies

Ways into Happiness

• SETTLER : _ 6
• CHIEFTAIN: 6
• WARLORD : 5
• NOBLE : _ _ 5
• PRINCE : _ _4
• MONARCH : 4
• EMPEROR : _3
• IMMORTAL : 3
• DEITY: _ _ _3

In warlords, you have 2 more ways to gain happiness : charismatic trait ("OH YEAH"), and vassals (yes, having vassals makes your people think they're big and strong )

• resources
  (Fur;Ivory;Gems;Gold;Silver;Dye;Incense;Silk;Spice s;Sugar;Whale;Wines)
• buildings
  (Palace, colosseum, theatre*, Broadcast Tower, temples, markets*, cathedrals*, forges*, barracks**)
• religion** (+1 isn't much, + 7 is better)
• civics
  (free religion, nationhood, environementalism, representation , Hereditary Rule)
• wonders
  (globe theater in the biggest city will make a huge difference in one city ,
  Notre dame a small one but everywhere,
  Broadway/hollywood/rock'n'roll will provide a happy resource)
• commerce slider
• future techs : I won't expand a lot on future techs. Every future tech gives you +1 happiness in every city. But who cares? The game is over at this point!

• population itself = "too crowded" :
  1 unhappiness for each population point (yes the 1st pop thinks it's already too crowded )
• "We fear for our safety" :
  a big city (size 3 and more AFAIK) without garrison unit will have unhappiness. A warrior is enough to remove this.
• slavery penalty = "cruelty" :
  1 unhappiness for each whip. The penalty goes away after 10 turns. If you whip more than once, the penalty only gets removed one at a time.
  (example :in the first turn after revolt you whip a captured city for a theater and a granary, you get 2 unhappiness for 10 turns, then 1 unhappiness for 10 other turns)
• drafting penalty = "we won't go":
  3 unhappiness for every draftee in a city. The penalty goes away after 10 turns.
• war weariness"what is war good for?" : the more you fight outside your borders, the more unhappiness you get. full information on this in krikkitone's article : war weariness mechanics
• "we yearn to return to our motherland" :
  when you capture a city, the ancient culture of the previous owner gives you unhappiness. This is removed when your culture gets dominant (=more than the ex-owner's) or when you kill the ex-owner.
• "we won't fight our brothers in faith" :
  when you attack a civ which shares the religion of this city, you get another share of unhappiness
• "We demand emancipation" :

• a size 6 city : 6 unhappiness "too crowded"
• a captured city (was german, now aztec) : 2 unhappiness "we yearn to join our motherland"
• a hinduist city, when in a war against a hinduist civ: 1 unhappiness from "we won't fight our brothers and sisters in Faith"
• This city has been whipped twice (temple and theater) : 2 unhappiness "we cannot forget your cruel oppression"
• war weariness : 4 unhappiness "war.. what is it good for? nothing"

• 1 happiness from the building (temple) : "some buildings are making us happy"
• 12 happiness from resources (including forge, market, theater doubling effect on ressources like gold, ivory and dye) : "we enjoy our luxurious resources"
• 1 happiness from hinduism being in the city while our state is hinduist : "in our religion we trust"
• 4 happiness from the culture slider (20% with a theater) : "we appreciate our entertainement"
• 1 happiness from the building (temple) : "some buildings are making us happy" [Bug?]
• 4 happiness because it's monarch level : "we just enjoy life"