Wuphon's Reach

Monday, December 21, 2009

Civ4: Favorite map scripts

Tectonics
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=149278

Tectonics does a very good job at creating semi-realistic land masses with interesting terrain and choke points. I recommend using either "Earthlike (70% water)" or "60% Water" settings to get a nice collection of continents with a few small islands spread around.

For a naval-centric setup, try "Islands", which creates a lot of smaller islands and probably close to 90% ocean.

Labels: 2009, CivilizationIV

posted by Wuphon's at 6:56 PM (0 comments)

Monday, December 08, 2008

Civilization IV - Keeping track of a large empire

Random Thought: One of the nice things about Civ4 is that you don't have to layout your cities perfectly (although dot maps are still somewhat helpful).

I tend to play huge / marathon maps, where you can be managing relationships with a dozen other civs and trying to keep track of a few dozen cities. What I've found as I move up the difficulty scale is that the game is actually more enjoyable when I pay attention to detail, then when I simply hit "next, next, next".

Now, I'm still trying to move from Warlord to Noble (huge / marathon / tectonic / 60% water / raging barbarians / no tech brokering). And I'm running the BtS Better AI module, which provides a good bit more challenge then the default. I tend to turn off the time victory as sometimes things are still hot and heavy come 2050 AD. I'm on the fence about the diplomatic (my diplomacy skills are not up to snuff yet) victory condition so I often turn that off. The culture and space race victories provide an interesting late-game dynamic where you have to commit to a path. Either by racing for the win yourself, or by attacking anyone who is building legendary cities or building spaceship components.

Alright, enough excuses.

When it comes to huge / marathon maps, it's impossible to look at every city on every turn. Instead, I tend to only go in-depth through all my cities about every 10-20 turns. In the meantime, I use other tricks to keep tabs on the overall health or special situations. So I'd boil down my strategy as follows:

Every Turn (things that tend to happen every turn)

Press the "W" key to cycle between units that are ready for new orders.

Glance at the surplus/deficit number in the upper left. Adjust the sliders to keep that number to match your current strategic goals.

During wartime, look for enemy units.

Glance at the city screen, looking for health, happiness or food problems.

My goal on every turn is to keep my finger on the pulse, but not do an in-depth review of every city.

On Demand (As prompted)

Pick new technologies.

Pick new buildings / projects / units to build.

Deal with events.

Deal with other civs that want your attention over some matter.

One trick that I have found is that you should use the "pick new thing for this city to work on" prompt as an alarm clock or reminder that you need to look at a city. To put it simply; don't fill a city's build queue with 500 turns worth of production. Your goal instead should be to set out a build queue that finishes up at around the time you need to re-examine the city.

For a city that is going to hit a health cap when it grows to the next population size in 50 turns (with 50 turns again before it grows past that point)... I will setup a build queue with about 50-75 turns worth of production. That way, shortly after the city grows to the new cap, I will get prompted to re-examine the city.

Sometimes it doesn't work out that you can do that. In which case you have to remember to look at the city again before that point, or use the Domestic Advisor to alert you of impending problems. But the majority of the time, it's possible to reduce the amount of detail that you're trying to keep track of by keeping your build queues small.

Every 3-10 Turns

Spend more time with the Domestic Advisor (F1) screen. Have some idea of what units / buildings will be finished in the next few turns.

Glance at the Foreign Advisor (F4). Keep in mind who is at war with who.

Glance at Victory Conditions (F8). Are we keeping up with our rivals? Has someone started to complete space race parts?

Open the Info Screen (F9). Check the power graph and make sure that other civilizations are not building up a "stack of death" and leaving you behind. If you're being left in the dust, you might find yourself the unexpected recipient of a Declaration of War (DoW).

During wartime (or when preparing), spend time getting to know the territory and enemy disposition of troops.

Glances are just that, a "glance". Ideally, you should not spend more then a few seconds checking key information on those screens. Checking these screens is generally a last check before I press the "end turn" button.

The primary goal here is to prevent nasty surprises from becoming disasters.

Every 5-20 Turns (In-Depth Review)

Check every city screen. I generally start with my capital city, then press the (Right Arrow) key to move to the next city until I get back to the capital. I'm looking for cities that need special buildings, or problems, or that tiles are worked properly or that the right specialists are present. This is the meat and potatos of city management and it should be reviewed on regular intervals.

Look at the Change Civics (F3) screen. Are we running the correct civics? Is it time for a change?

Look closely at the Foreign Advisor (F4) screen. Spend time reviewing the "Glance" screen so that you know who is friendly with who. Review your active trades. Look at the "Resources" tab to see if there are trades to be made. Take a peek at the other tabs to see if there are trade opportunities or upcoming threats.

Hit up your Military Advisor (F5). Are your units where you want them? Do you need to shift units around to meet potential threats?

Review the Religion Advisor (F7). Do all of your cities have the correct religions? Especially important when running Organized Religion or Theocracy civics.

Look at all the graphs on the Info Screen (F9). Specifically, check your "Mfg. Goods (Prod.)", "Crop Yield (Food)", and "Power" graphs. How are you stacking up against the opponents? The "Cultur" and "Espionage" graphs are also useful at times. Review the "Top 5 Cities/Wonders" and see who is out in front. The Demographics tab is also useful for checking out whether we are keeping up with the other civs.

Check the Espionage Screen (Ctrl-E). Make sure that you've assigned points (EPs) to the correct civs in the correct ratios. I usually work in multiples of 5s (5, 10, 15, 20) depending on how much of a threat or focus I consider the civilizations.

For peacetime, I usually work on a 10-20 turn schedule for the in-depth looks. Especially in mid-game where there's a lot of stuff perculating and I don't need to keep close eyes on things. But a lot can go wrong in 20 turns (especially with regards to the city screens), so I try to review all my cities every 10 turns.

But ever since I started going through all my cities every 10 turns or so, my gameplay has gotten a lot better. I end up more engaged and involved in the game and get a deeper enjoyment out of it.
Labels: 2008, CivilizationIV

posted by Wuphon's at 10:13 AM (0 comments)

Monday, December 01, 2008

Civilization IV - Beyond the Sword - Domestic Advisor Screen Columns

So I've been mucking around with Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (a.k.a BtS); which is the second expansion pack for the original Civilization IV. They've done an excellent follow-on to the Warlords expansion, with more of a focus on Corporations, more wonders and civilizations, and a rebalancing of traits and the late-era tech tree. The timescale also seems to work better and is more accurate.

However, one of the changes in BtS is that the Domestic Advisor (F1) screen now has additional columns that are not explained in-game. Some of them you're used to from the previous versions, but from left-to-right, they are now:

City Icon: Allows you to enter the city screen for any particular city.

City Name: The name of the city.

POP: The city population.

Yellow Smiley Face: This column represents the number of happy people surplus (or deficit). Green (and positive) numbers indicate that your city has excess happiness.

White Circle with Red Cross: Represents the amount of surplus (or deficit) for health. Green (>0) numbers are good and indicate excess health.

Bread: The amount of excess (or deficit) food being produced (from tiles that are being worked). Green (greater than zero) indicates that your city is growing (or can grow).

Hammer: The number of hammers (production) currently being produced. Useful for finding those high-production cities when deciding where to build military units.

Yellow Coins (two columns): The amount of gold being produced by the city. Good for finding where to put the Wall Street national wonder.

Green Beaker: The number of research points being produced by the city. Denotes science, so put your main science buildings in these cities.

Red Circle Spy: Indicates how many espionage points are being generated by this city.

Purple Music Notes: The amount of culture being produced per turn (the "rate") in this city.

Three Yellow Arrows: The number of trade routes in this city.

Red Coin Icon: A lot of people call this a "red unhappy face", but it's actually a red coin. It represents the amount of city maintenance for this city, rounded to the nearest integer. So if the city currently costs 1.80 per turn, you will see a "2" in this column. A value of 3.26 displays as "3". Good for finding out what cities urgently need courthouses.

Yellow Icon with Black Silhouette: The number of "great person" (GP) points per turn being generated and the approximate time of the next Great Person being born.

Black Hourglass: This is supposed to represent old-style castle towers that were narrow-waisted. It indicates the number of units currently stationed in a city. Makes it easier to find out where you left that "stack of death". And for Hereditary Rule, allows you to determine how much of the happiness surplus is due to military units.

Production: The current unit or building being produced and the estimated time (in turns) until it is completed.

I've been playing Civ4 for a long time (since after it came out) and I confess that I've never really figured out the Domestic Advisor screen. The only columns that I had a grasp of were the name, the production, research and commerce columns, and the list of what city was producing what.

But now that I've sat down and puzzled out the various columns, city maintenance can become a whole lot easier. Basically every turn (or 5 turns), you should look at this screen and ask the following questions:

Do I have any cities with zero (or negative) happiness? It can be risky to have less then 1 or 2 surplus happiness in a city, because of war weariness or adverse events. I generally try to keep one spare happy face in each city.

Do all of my cities have surplus (or zero) health? Health is a little easier to plan for, so I'll often grow a city right up to the health limit.

Do I have excess food being grown? No cities should be starving and smaller cities should be producing extra food to aid with growth.

Those are definitely the big questions to ask. It ensures that all of your cities are at least healthy, happy, and growing. Much faster then looking at the map and trying to find cities with red or green unhappy faces.
Labels: 2008, CivilizationIV

posted by Wuphon's at 8:42 AM (1 comments)

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Civ4: Stealth bombers for the defense

Almost lost a city (or three) to a surprise attack by two different enemy civs this past week. I had a pretty good defensive position, the southern half of a triangular peninsula. But my southern cites were only lightly defended. Most cities had a fighter plane, one modern unit and a handful of older outdated units that were due for upgrades. In addition, I had a handful of stealth bombers sprinkled around various cities.

When I went to war on my northern border, I was not really expecting the enemy to counter-attack by sea. In hindsight, I should've expected it as I could not locate as many units as I thought would be defending territory. So they sailed up to my shores and unloaded a large stack of invaders (roughly 6-9 units in the stack).

There was no way that the defenders in my city would be able to dislodge such a beast of a stack. Some of my defenders were still pre-gunpowder (although they got upgraded on the next turn to modern era units with my spare gold).

Instead, I quickly rebased a few bombers to cities surrounding the invasion beachhead. I also started moving modern units (thank goodness I had railroads already laid) in to the surrounding tiles and the city tile to reinforce the city and contain the invasion.

While those reinforcements were getting into place and digging in, my stealth bombers flew multiple attack runs against the enemy stack (losing an aircraft about 1/8th of the time, getting it damaged about 1/3 of the time, and getting away scott-free the rest of the time). By the time my counter-attack was ready, the enemy stack was down to half health for all units and my forces were able to mop them up handily.
Labels: 2005, CivilizationIV

posted by Wuphon's at 2:38 PM (0 comments)

Friday, November 11, 2005

Civ4: More strategy thoughts

Played a few more games in CivIV. Terrain defensive bonuses are very powerful and should definitely play a prominent role in strategy for defensive play. I've talked briefly about the basics before, but I can now expound on that a bit more with additional play under my belt.

Assuming that the attacker/defender have no specific unit type bonuses against the opponent... (some units gain +25% against archery units for example). Also ignoring the terrain defense bonuses that some units get (+25% if they're on a hill, or +25% if they're in a city). Here's how it stacks up for defender bonuses. These bonuses only apply if you are the defender in a particular attack.

The basic components are (and these all add together):

1) Whether the defending unit has entrenched themselves into their current square. Most units get this ability (but not all). Every turn, you gain an additional 5% towards your defender strength, with a maximum of 25%.

2) Whether the attacker is crossing a river. The defender gets +25% in that case.

3) The terrain bonus. Flat tiles get no bonus. Coastal tiles provide a +10% bonus and hills give +25%.

4) The "cover" bonus. Any tiles that are covered in jungle or forest add a 50% bonus.

5) Manmade fortifications. These are obsolete against gunpowder units but are useful before then. A fort (built by a worker on an unworked tile) gives +25%. Cities can also have walls built around them which grant 25% as well. There are also other city-specific defense bonuses that come into play and vary a lot (archers get +25% or +50% for sitting on a city tile, a high-culture city gives a bonus).

Obviously, some of the above are mutually exclusive. You can't get the forest bonus if you've built any improvement on the tile (such as a farm, cottage, fort or city). You can't build a fort on a city tile or a mine.

So what does this mean on a practical level? To calculate the combat strength of the unit in a particular situation:

1) Add up all of the defender bonuses from terrain, etc. Add in any bonuses for defending against the attacker's unit type (such as spearmen who get +100% against mounted units). Subtract any negatives that the attacker gets for a particular situation (some attackers get +25% against archers for instance, or +10% for attacking a city tile). The end result is your modifier value (which can be negative).

2) Multiple the result of step 1 against the defender's current strength. This value is typically called "D".

3) Compare against the current strength of the attacker (this value is typically called "A").

Obviously, if you are the attacker, you want a ratio of A/D that is greater then 1.0. Ideally, you want a ratio that is more like 2.0:1 or even 3.0:1. That requires making tactical decisions about which unit to attack with first, because if there are multiple defenders on the target tile the computer will pick the best one to counter with.

Examples (disregarding "vs unit type" bonuses):

A) Attacking units on a neighboring flat tile. No defender bonus for terrain, cover, or situation. So the only modifiers will be any "vs unit type" bonuses. This is the ideal situation for an attacker, because the defender is basically out in the open with nowhere to hide (and no bonuses to bolster their strength).

B) Across a river. Defender gets +25%. Bad move, cross the river, then attack the target from the same side of the river on the next round.

C) Defender on a hill gets +25%. Try to lure the defender off of their tile down onto flat tiles.

D) Defender in a covered tile (forest/jungle) gets +50%. Try to lure the defender off of the covered tile and out into the open.

E) Defender in a fort gets +25%.

F) Defender in a city gets a varying bonus (this is displayed above the city name in the main view, IIRC). Bombardment by seige weapons (catapult, cannon, artillery, tank) should be used first to lower the defense bonus prior to attacking.

G) Defender that has dug in gets +5% to +25%. Make him attack and thereby lose his entrench bonus.

Combinations of the above situations (or why you should never attack a defender on their chosen ground):

A) Forested Hill = +75%

B) Forested Hill, Across a River, Entrenched Defender = +100% (this can go even higher if the defender has hilltop defense bonuses).

C) Forest Hill, Fortified = +50%.

D) Forest Hill, Foritified and Entrenched = +75%.

E) Entrenched defender on a flat tile inside a fort = +50%.

F) City, Across a River, Entrenched Defender = +75% (or even much higher)

Thoughts on how this will play out in CivIV:

A) Barbarians - Barbarian AI is somewhat simplistic. They will make a beeline for the nearest target for the most part. So entrenching archers on a forested hill on the outskirts of your empire will draw many attackers. (A bit like using a bug zapper to keep the insect population down.) Sometimes they will bypass your pickets and go on a pillaging run, so you will need to have backup plans for when they play smarter.

B) AI Opponents - A bit craftier and more likely to calculate odds of winning rather then suicide on your defenses. In this case, static hard points are merely staging areas for raids on the enemies avenue of attack. Your goal is to herd the enemy to a place of your choosing where you can slaughter them without them having any defensive bonus from terrain.

C) Human Opponents - All bets are off. They may choose to wear you down, or use feints to draw your forces off to one side, etc.. The goal is to out-maneuver your opponent so that you can bring more forces to a particular battle them they can.

Obviously, the ideal situation is a series of pickets in a desert or grassland environment where there are conveniently spaced forested hills with only 2 flat tiles between hills. If you position pickets on every hill, the enemy cannot slip past your pickets without taking 1-3 turns worth of attacks.

The terrain generator in CivIV, however, is never that accomodating. So instead you have to make do with what it gives you and formulate a new plan for just about every situation. What will you do if an attacker attempts to bypass point X and drive directly against target Y? Will you be able to wither his flanks, or can he stay on forest/jungle/hill tiles to lower your chances of success?
Labels: 2005, CivilizationIV

posted by Wuphon's at 11:05 AM (0 comments)

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Civ4: Prelude to war

I've got what I think is going to boil down to a war on my eastern front. China is attempting to press my territorial boundaries and has been building new settlements along my eastern front. Naturally, I've also been attempting to build new settlements there as well as moving troops. Quite a few of my hills overlooking the front now have forts on them. The downside is that China is ranked #1 in the scores, and I'm really not looking forward to going up against them in a war. Worse, China is already "cautious" towards me, so we're only 1 or 2 steps away from hostilities.

The first map shows the overall strategic situation. You can see that I have a very wide front with the Mongolians (dark yellow) to the southwest, a narrow front with the Incas (medium yellow) up north, and a potentially wide front with China (purple). An adequate description of this situation is "between a rock and a hard place". There's a very good chance that I could find myself fighting a multi-front war with multiple AI civilizations.

The next map shows resource distribution. You can see that there is copper, iron, marble down in the SE of my empire, which is why I'm pressing so hard to setup shop down there. While I have copper and iron in other parts of my empire, it's always good to have extra sources and to deny their use to my enemies. My only "safe" copper mine is up in the NE near the Incas (near Nezumi) and my only "safe" iron mine (near Old Kyoto) is pretty much right on the border with the Mongolians.

Securing those 2 iron mines and the copper mine down in the SE is what will keep me from going under over the long term. There's another copper mine up in the NE part of the eastern front (near Izumo) that is also pretty strategic.

The next 2 images are high altitude screenshots of my eastern front. I've removed all labels from the map so that it's easier to see terrain, cities and fortification points. This is a pair of screenshot stitched together to make it easier to see the entire area in question.

Here's a marked up map. Green blocks are my cities. Red blocks are (future) enemy cities. Yellow six-pointed stars are where I have fortifications. Yellow stars that are not filled in are planned future locations for fortifications. It's a very heavy defensive concentration. The purple star is where I will place a fort once I take their westernmost city in a smash attack.

The rules for combat in Civ4 are somewhat simple. The terrain that the defender is standing on may give bonuses to the defender. Whoever initiates the attack is always considered the attacker and gets no terrain bonus (yes/no/maybe?) during the assault. So for the following situations where the attacker is attacking a defender:

(Location / Bonus)
Hill = +25%
Hidden in Jungle/Forest = +50%
Inside a fort = +25%
Across a river = +25%

So for a defender, the best place to hide is either in a jungle/forest, or on top of a fortified hill. Some units get additional abilities that grant them even more defensive power when stationed in a city or on a hilltop or in forest/jungle. These force multipliers allow 3STR archers to take on 5STR axemen and win. Plus, there's a bonus for digging in ahead of time (+5% per turn, up to +25% max). Cities can also build walls and other fortifications that add defense bonuses.

So, almost all of my forts are located on hills. A lot of my cities end up on hills as well. Mountain tiles cannot be crossed by units and serve as a natural defense. Putting your units on the safe side of a river provides natural defense.

Notice that the AI does not have any forts. I'm not sure if this is a bug in the AI, or if the AI simply won't use them.

As I hinted earlier, if the China AI decides to start a fight, I have a few preliminary plans.

A) Stop their assault in the NE. I expect that Izumo in the NE is a likely target. It's in an extended position and there are sizeable cities within a short march. The (2) forts and the city are manned with at least one of each type of fighting unit that I can muster (knight STR10, crossbowman STR6, longbowman STR6, pikeman STR6). I'll make sure that all squares surrounding Izumo are covered in roads to allow my troops quick movement on/off an attacker's tile. Since Izumo is built on a hill, the defensive troops all have the +25% hill bonus.

Plus, if I can extend my cultural borders 1 square to the south, there's another hill where I can place a fortification and add a first line of defense.

B) Stop an attack based out of Baoding (their western city). If I'm weak, it's here in the middle. Yokohama is a straight shot across some plains and my defensive units would have to leave their hilltops to get within strike range of the incoming army. Knights are going to be a key part of any defense down in that area (as is covering the terrain in a road network).

C) Stop a southern attack (unlikely). If they come via the southern river valley, they're in for a long march.

D) Retaliation plan #1. Raze any improvements in the area between Shadong and Kaifeng up north. Hit and run raids, avoiding battle whenever possible. Probably with knights and pikeman. There are half a dozen tiles that the AI has improved and is working within strike range of my Izumo units.

E) Retaliation #2. Take Baoding. This requires staging of catapults at the forts to the NW and S of Baoding. Their town is still lightly guarded, but it will take some serious firepower to overcome a grenadier STR12 unit that has both city defense promotions.

The usual plan is to outfit the catapults with barrage ability and then suicide them against the stack of defenders in the city. The barrage ability results in damage to other units in the stack, not just the one that attempts to defend against your attack. Each suicide attack lowers the STR of the defenders until eventually I can send in my infantry to take the city streets.

Additional units will need to take up positions on the hill east of Baoding to repel reinforcements. This is a nicely forested hill that provides a hefty +50% bonus to defense and all of the surrounding tiles are denuded of forest (or were desert to begin with).
Labels: 2005, CivilizationIV

posted by Wuphon's at 3:43 PM (0 comments)