Civilization vs Total War

[Beefy187]

NO!!!! never set your workers to Auto, it's the quick route to destroying your civilization!!

It is damn boring micromanaging them all though,, I must agree!

I set them on build trade network which doesn't seem to harm me.

But thats only after I get Railroads. Until then I Micro Manage.

4 workers are enough for me unless I am forced to have more after capturing a few cities.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I set them on build trade network which doesn't seem to harm me.

But thats only after I get Railroads. Until then I Micro Manage.

4 workers are enough for me unless I am forced to have more after capturing a few cities.

Actually there's a guy at the Civfanatics forums named The Me In Team who autos everything. He autos workers and uses the governor feature. He plays Emperor level I believe. His argument is that in the early game micro workers, but as the game gets along he autos them, and as long as you use it with the governor feature (i.e. emphasize x), then they'll work terrain how you want it. Also he's one of the fastest players around, completing the average game in about 2 to 3 hours.


Also, Civ 4 and EB are about the same for me. It really depends on what I want to do and how I'm feeling. They're two of the only games I actually play nowadays, so there's plenty of room for both of them.

[Beefy187]

Actually there's a guy at the Civfanatics forums named The Me In Team who autos everything. He autos workers and uses the governor feature. He plays Emperor level I believe. His argument is that in the early game micro workers, but as the game gets along he autos them, and as long as you use it with the governor feature (i.e. emphasize x), then they'll work terrain how you want it. Also he's one of the fastest players around, completing the average game in about 2 to 3 hours.


Also, Civ 4 and EB are about the same for me. It really depends on what I want to do and how I'm feeling. They're two of the only games I actually play nowadays, so there's plenty of room for both of them.

I never quite got if I should build a farm or a cottage. Most forums tells me theres a terrain where farms are completely useless if I build on them so its far better to build a cottage.

Maybe I should auto it

[Owen Glyndwr]

I never quite got if I should build a farm or a cottage. Most forums tells me theres a terrain where farms are completely useless if I build on them so its far better to build a cottage.

Maybe I should auto it

Well, that really depends on what you're doing. If you run a CE (Cottage Economy), i.e. you generate commerce in the cities which are run through multipliers and through the slider which converts to beakers, then you want to have just enough food to keep the city growing and just crank out the cottages. Ideal cities are FP (flood plain) for the +1 commerce and +1 Food, and riverside grassland tiles. Also in a CE you want one food heavy city (i.e. several food sources in the BFC) to serve as a Great Person Farm, which converts the food to specialists to crank out the Great People, especially scientists. Ideal trait is definitely the Financial Trait, and ideal civics are US and Emancipation (?). The benefit of the CE is that it creates the best research rate of the three, however it is very slow to shine through due to the long time it takes for cottages to mature into towns, and is easy to use. (The cottage is the worse upgrade, but town is the best)

If you run a SE (Specialist Economy), however, the strategy is to farm everything to get the cities as High pop as possible and covert the excess population into specialists which directly create beakers for your research, allowing you to run the slider at 100% wealth for the whole game. Here you look for food heavy areas and just farm. However, specialist the idea is to prioritize. If a city has a lot of hammers, you turn it into a prod city which churns out your units. You have science cities to generate beakers, and you usually have your best few science cities become commerce cities (or is it the other way around?) The ideal trait for SE is philosophical, and a good strategy is to get the Pyramids early (Unlocks all Gov. civics) to run representation early (All specialists earn beakers) Another good civic is Caste System (Unlimited Merchants, Artists and Engineers (?)). The Specialist economy is strong in that it is versatile, by altering specialists you can do what you want, however it is very weak until you get Representation, and the beaker output is slightly lower than a CE (The SE is slightly more popular among high level players)

The final major economy is the HE (Hammer Economy) In a hammer economy, your cities look for hammer heavy cities, and just workshop everything not a hill. Using the "build x" feature (Wealth, Research, or Culture), you convert hammers to your research. The Hammer economy doesn't really take off until you get the State Property civic with Communism, leading many HE advocates to play a CE or SE until Liberalism (Free tech for first to discover), and then beeline straight for Communism. If you have a heavy lead, you may even be able to take Comm. with Lib. The advantages of an HE is that it is very easy to set up, very easy to manage, and allows you to basically build whatever you want (Making you very strong on the military front). Also, there are some who assert that due to the nature of an HE, your economy is basically uncrashable (I.E. expand too quickly, dropping your slider to 10% or lower, sending your tech pace to a crawl) when in one. Because of it's ease of setup, a lot of players will play an HE in their late game gains through war. The disadvantages of an HE are that it's potency in terms of beaker output is the worst of the three, making it only truly viable on it's on in large empires, Also it is essentially horrendous until you get SP (Workshops earn food), and the fact that you're tech rate will drop when you transition into war as some of your cities are no longer generating beakers for you.

Now a lot of people don't like to get into discussions about which economy is the best as they are all equally viable, and very strong when used in the right situation. A growing mentality in the CFC is to simply not be identified by the type of economy you play. A lot of people will run a mixed economy, and build improvements in cities based on what they perceive would be the best route in each city.

I really hope this helps as this is a very general overview, and if you go to the CFC, you'd see strategy articles on each type of economy which run in the tens of pages.

[Beefy187]

Never quite got how to do great person farm till now.

Thanks heaps Owen Glyndwr

[Noncommunist]

For me, it depended on what I wanted to do at the moment. At times, I got tired of the near useless diplomacy in MTW2 so I started playing Civ 4, other times, I got tired of the less controllable combat in Civ 4 so I went to MTW2, both have their advantages. Right now, Civ 4 has the advantage of working on a Mac as XP hasn't been reinstalled on it.

[wumpus]

well, i've tried several civ games and their mods, and i've tried almost all tw--but i don't think an ordinary joe can try any number of the tw mods there are for him to say he has played most of them-- and there's a big difference. in tw, you build up your economy to buy some troops, and when you're ready to battle you'd have a fair chance of victory--the more warriors (of whatever kind) in relation to the enemy, the bigger is your propensity of winning in combat and at the same time you could suffer less casualties. in civ, you build up your economy to buy some troops and when you think you've enough and start to do battle--why the troops that you have fight one after the other and not all together as a team they slug it out in individual combat until one or the other "dies," then it's the turn of the next individual, etc., until either you or the enemy runs out of troops! in tw, you have a general or family member, you can develop him to be a tyrant or a benevolent ruler; in civ, you unrealistically shift government styles from monarchy to communism or fascism to democracy or whatever else (this won't happen to ANY kind of real-world people who have cultural sentiments, traditions, family ties, etc.) so, my point is--for me, there is no comparison between tw and civ, as there is nothing in common between fantasy and the real world.
but oh, of course, i DO play quite a number of civgames, and continue to do so--only i don't feel it's anything real, and i don't play civ for a substantial length of time. in fact, i feel the AGE OF EMPIRES games would be more realistic-feeling for me, than civ is (although, get me right, i don't consider AoE to be "very" realistic," only they're that closer to being realistic games than civ games are). and, by the way, i truly appreciate Sid Meier's talents at game-making, for example his very amusing PIRATES.
Hawooh.