While not a newbie to the 4x genre of games, I am new to the Civilization series.
I recently picked up all 3 games in the Civ. IV series (vanilla, Warlords, BtS) but have only played BtS so far.

I'm more of a "peaceful builder" type who likes to climb the tech trees and research all kinds of nifty stuff while maintaining a moderately sized military for defensive purposes. I prefer not to go to war unless there is a good reason to, such as only one Oil resource on an entire continent or something.

I've been reading some of the tutorials in the War Academy section and also browsing the forum, so I have an understanding of the basic flow of gameplay. What I lack is the knowledge of what a decent civ. would be for my type of gameplay and how I should set my cities up.

Keep in mind I'm still in the learning stages of the game, so I'm not sure that I have a victory condition in mind. Rather, I'm playing just to play so I can learn more about how things interact.

I would recommend Hannibal. He has the potential for a powerful economy, which will help you tech faster, and charismatic and financial are both powerful traits that are not overly difficult to make good use of. A lot of beginners often have trouble managing their city size in response to overcrowding, and charismatic helps a lot in this regard.

Creative is not a bad trait for newbies either, since it means you don't have to worry about getting those first ten :culture: for the fat cross.

I agree that Creative is a good trait. It means your borders pop very soon, with- out having to build Stonehenge or monuments. You can learn better to place your cites so that you get good resources in your fat cross (which is the nine tile zone around your city- the tiles you can work).

Rameses is good because he is Industrious, meaning reduced cost of wonders.
also he has the awesome war chariot, which is good if you want to sharpen up your early rush of the neighbor's cities. After an early rush you can build peacefully to the space win.

Hatty is creative, and has the war chariot, but not industrious.

Then there's financial, with cottage spam, will win the game for you up to and including Prince level, but I prefer Creative/Industrious ( which is Louis - But I can't stand him as an AI so I dont play him )

For first Civs, I have previously recommended Hammurabi, because he is a good generalist, has traits that are really good for warmongering, but not bad for building up an empire (Organized), has an early and good UU so you don't get stomped by axe rushes or anything like that, and has a UB that provides both health and happiness (a Colosseum replacement).

I'd look for traits myself...Creative, Charismatic, and Financial are good starts. Spiritual is good as well for beginners because it lets you switch civics like crazy and try stuff out without paying for it with anarchy. Many players find Imperialistic and Protective weak, so you might want to save those to try for later (unless they are paired with a solid trait like the ones above). If you are a builder, you can use the Industrious trait, but I find its benefit to be highly overrated...I'll take Philosophical or Organized any day over Industrious.

In the end, it comes down to personal preference.

I played my warm-up games with Mehmed.Easy to play.Organized and healthy.Without problems.:)

Cyrus is not a bad leader. He gives a lot of money, and he gives a good early military unit, that you can use to take a few early cities from your enemies, so that you don't have to go to war later. Also, if you use unrestricted leaders, Cyrus and the Holy Roman Empire are a great combination together.

I started off with Hannibal on a Hemispheres map and had a start point in a desert somewhere. Not particularly noteworthy except for the fact that I noticed his Unique Building replaces the harbor, and I was nowhere near a coastline. :lol:

I think I might try giving one of the other suggestions a try and see how they turn out.

Cyrus is not a bad leader. He gives a lot of money, and he gives a good early military unit, that you can use to take a few early cities from your enemies, so that you don't have to go to war later. Also, if you use unrestricted leaders, Cyrus and the Holy Roman Empire are a great combination together.

Cyrus is certainly not a bad leader, but I think strategies that make the most of his traits and UU are a bit sophisticated for a beginner. I've been playing for a while now, and I still can't do chariot rushes well.

Sitting Bull. get the ol dog face warrior UU. Protective and axe uu should keep u alive for awhile. Totem pole gives you monument expansion and experience for archers. I say newbie = Sitting Bull or Greece.

wang kon is good for noobs who like to tech without having to worry about wars. India could also be huge for noobs, but they need a more noob-oriented leader, like one that has 2 of the following :Fin/Ind/Pro

Protective is a huge trait for those who aren't yet sure how to manage wars. just remember to build lots of archers!

I suggest Darius... new people in Civ IV tends to underestimate city maintenance and both of Darius traits help with that

Hi

Hmmm..someone very new to game who wants a peaceful civ and plans mainly to be builder with small defensive military.

I think the best civ suited for that is the Native americans.

Their unique unit has two advantages for that. One it requires NO resources so you are guaranteed to have it and dont have to worry about trying to look for and make sure you find the resource for it and hook it up. (And since it a early game unit you also dont have to worry about being in situation where only choice is going to war to get the resource or doing without the resource and the unit you want to have--at least early on) Two while their Unique unit is not the greatest for attacking and capturing cities it is VERY good for sallying out to attack invaders out in the open. Especially if they are promoted with that idea in mind.

Also city defenders (the units you have fortified inside your cities to take brunt of a city attack) usually tend to be primarily and sometimes even soley archer units. And the native american Unique Building helps out in this area by giveing a BIG boost to Archer units. So with native american you civ would be very well defended early on. You will have strong city defenders fortified in your cities and a Unique unit you KNOW you will get no matter what that is very good for going out to stop invaders before they even get to your cities or pillage your resources.

This being BtS you also can choose unrestricted leaders to get a better Leader :)

Now I KNOW everyone LOVES financial. Financial is definitely and very strong trait and if leveraged it can be the MOST powerful trait in the game. But it only works best IF you place your cities in locations that can take advantage of it. IF you build cottages in those ideal city locations. IF you balance and manage your cottages so you dont wind up with a civ full of cities that that may be bringing in TONS of commerce but cant build anything since their production is so low. IF while balancing to make sure at least a few cities can produce you ALSO balanced your cities to make sure you have enough food to work all those cottages. IF you take care after working those cottages you make sure they are never pillaged and HOPE they are never sabotaged. Cottages take a LONG time to grow into towns and depending on game speed you can literally have hundreds of turns spent working a cottage wasted if it gets pillaged. And while you can defend against pillaging stopping spies from sabotaging them is pretty much all luck even if you do spend tons on espionage and spies. Luckily the AI will very rarely send apies to do that but it still a risk.

To me that seems like LOTS of "if's" for someone who is just learning game basics. Vetern players run cottages in thier sleep so to them it piece of cake. To someone learning the game it can take some getting used to. And we havent EVEN gotten into how some civics are better for a civ running tons of cottages.

Now yeah you DONT have to run so many cottages but without at least SOME kind of cottage only or cottage/hybrid economy or you happen to have tons of cities planted on coasts then financial will do pretty much nothing for your civ.

To me the two best traits for new players are Creative and Organized. I think those are good traits are both good since you dont have to do ANYthing to get the most out of em. And they are very useful especially early on and help out in two of the biggest problems civs can run into at start of game and can be a big pain for people just learning game.

Creative will help your borders pop on their own without needing to worry about getting culture buildings fast into new cities. And organized will help let you expand early without hurting your economy.

Zara Yakob the ethiopian is Creative/organized so you might want to try him with the native americans.

Other leaders you might want to try with Native Americans are
Napoleon (Charismatc/Organized) Charasimatic works nice since another early problem is happiness and Charasmatic helps. Also creative is not as crucial with Native americans since Native american Unique building produces culture and you will want it in most if not all of your cities anyways. Their unique building also nice since it works with charasimatic for even more happiness.

Chruchhill (charismatic/protective) Protective might be nice for defensive minded players since it it also gives a boost to archery units. So when combined with Native americans UB you will have VERY tough Archer units. And with charasimatic that means BOTH of Churchills traits will be synergizing with the UB.

FDR (organized/Industrious) Industrious is nice since if you wish to be peaceful builder it can help you in building wonders without worrying about getting the different resources that boost wonder building. (and if you do egt em then it just icing on cake) FDR's combo is also handy since two biggest production buildings for a civ are forge and factory and FDR's traits lets you build em both (organized for factory and industrious for forge) faster. So even if you never build a wonder it will still help your civs production over all.

If for whatever reason you dont like those leaders and want to shop around here is my advice on traits in general. And again this is keeping in mind plan for a inexperienced player who wants to be primarily peaceful and avoid warring and have a mainly defensive military.

Traits would suit that situation best in no particular order Creative, Organized, Charismatic, Industrious, Protective.

Traits you might want to avoid are Finanical, Spiritual, Philosophical. It's not that thes traits are weak. In fact they just opposite they can be some of the strongest if not THE strongest traits in game IF you actively work to get the most out of em. If you dont work at em then they just become mediocre or even worse useless. So for new player who maybe wants to concentrate more on game basics and not have to worry about also making decisions to get most of their leader traits then maybe save thse for later when you more comfortable.

Traits to avoid just because they wont suit prefered game style as much. Agressive, Imperialistic. Agressive for obvious reasons, Imperialistic because for techy reasons (you can look up if you REALLY wantto know the techy details) the settler bonus is a bit deceptive and actually you wont really be making settlers THAT much faster then non imperialisitic civs especially early on. And the great general bonus only helps if you fight alot and even just having great generals only helps much if you fight alot so this trait really wouldnt help you much and if game goes your way and you avoid wars you wont even use it.

I think that only leaves Expansive. Expansive is not a BAD trait it is just that it wouldnt help as much as the other traits I listed already. Faster worker production is deceptive for same dealio as Imperialistic its settler production bonus and extra health is nice but not really as hurtful as happiness problems and Health only really becomes an issue late in game and by then there will also be TONS of other ways to deal with it. So while it might not be a trait to avoid it also not a trait you would particularly want to get compared to others.

I hope this helps a little :)

Kaytie

Either Hanni or a Creative dude.

I'd recommend Darius or either of the Romans. Darius gets a ridiculously powerful economy no matter what happens, which is always a good thing for research, expansion, war, and the like. So even if you don't know a lot about cottages (or economy in general) organized will keep your economy afloat while you experiment with financial and cottages. Not to mention the fact that the Persian UU, Immortals, are a very good UU. The Romans have average traits (imperialistic=mediocre, industrious or organized=good for building or teching) but their UU, the praetorian is insanely powerful for a very long time (giving you a long period of time in your game(s) to make mistakes, learn from them, and not suffer any real consequences). This would synergize well with your goals because even a small army of praetorians can take out most of what the AI will throw at you on nearly any difficulty level.

DUDE, QUICK, DON'T OPEN THAT BOX!!!!! Do not open the Warlords box, please, you do not need it in any way. Return it if at all possible. Everything that came with Warlords came in BTS except the scenarios which suck. I really really hope you didn't open it yet.

But to answer your question I always play as Huayna Capac, he's great for peaceful, Financial and Industrious. I hear Financial can become a crutch, though.

^^ RoR and Genghis Khan was pretty nice though...

DUDE, QUICK, DON'T OPEN THAT BOX!!!!! Do not open the Warlords box, please, you do not need it in any way. Return it if at all possible. Everything that came with Warlords came in BTS except the scenarios which suck. I really really hope you didn't open it yet.

But to answer your question I always play as Huayna Capac, he's great for peaceful, Financial and Industrious. I hear Financial can become a crutch, though.

A little late. :D

I also bought The Orange Box at the same time, so all 8 games got installed already.

So far I've played BtS, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.

Anyway, going from some of the earlier suggestions, I did try Ramses and I'm currently around 200 AD. I'm on another hemisphere map with random continents and random island sizes and I managed to spawn on a smallish continent with Tokugawa as my only neighbor.

With this only being on Warlord difficulty, I'm not doing too bad. However, I will most likely start another game with another one of the civs / leaders that was mentioned just to get a feel for the different ones. From the sounds of it, I'll most likely go with Sitting Bull. I have thought about using him before, but I've seen him in two other games I've played and he was always at or near the bottom of the score list, so I steered away from him on that basis.

Yeah, I'm going to second Darius again. All you need to do with Darius is build enough farms to make cities grow, the rest, make cottages. You'll be so rich, you will not know what to do with the money.

Go Philosophical and "force" yourself to learn about Great People (GPs) early. They are very important.

Huayna. Financial is the easiest to use trait and trains a player to build decent number of cottages because the return is just too obvious (CE is easier to learn than SE). Industrious means the addiction to wonder-building (number 1 habit of newbies) won't kill their military and they can have fun experimenting some Oracle slingshots. Quecha make sure they are safe from the annoying barbs till the appearance of barb axes. Terraces remind a beginner to build granery early. Since a beginner is going to start on lower levels, getting mysticism as a start tech means early religions and this is a good exercise for the player to learn this aspect.

I guess for the beginners, fun is more important. They will learn the game mechanism sooner or later once they get hooked. Huayna is quite easy to use.

Louis XIV. Loads of culture, plus you get a head-start on Stonehenge, the Oracle, Pantheon, etc.

I still use him, but I only play on Warlord. I just cannot, CANNOT use my military. I suppose I'm sort of obsessive compulsive, I have to have every city defended by exactly the same thing, and I won't upgrade until I have enough gold to upgrade ALL of them, unless I'm willing to set my research slider to 0.

I still use him, but I only play on Warlord. I just cannot, CANNOT use my military. I suppose I'm sort of obsessive compulsive, I have to have every city defended by exactly the same thing, and I won't upgrade until I have enough gold to upgrade ALL of them, unless I'm willing to set my research slider to 0.
Oops, i mean Huayna. I didn't see the Louis post. :p

Oops, i mean Huayna. I didn't see the Louis post. :p

What do you mean by you can't use your military? You play Huayna, you will have tons of cash, very good to support a sizeable army.

Just look at the last line in my signature....

I am a noob to Civ IV too...started playing Beyond The Sword yesterday...so far I played 5 full games on Standad Map (offline) and the ladder I most liked was Shaka, When I played with him I dominated 60% of the territory for a long time and after midgame it was war after war, I even had a vessel colony ^^ very fun

What are the three biggest problems for noobs? I'd say money, research, culture. Grab the dutch leader and you have no problem. Then toss in the goodness of the levee and you solve another problem, production. Outside of his eh ub I think he's a powerhouse.

For an inexperienced builder-wannabe, I would say Asoka.

He is spiritual, so you can change governments almost as much as you want.
He comes with a fast worker as an unique unit. It never expires and moves 3 tiles at once.
This is critical if you have no overarching game plan, as is often the case for newbies. Experienced players KNOW when they will fight a war, often according to the unique unit, and plan government change in advance. With Asoka, you are free from this.
Heck, you do not waste your unique unit if you NEVER go to war, and you have the builder's dream unit. Moreover, you can experiment changing governments, make mistakes and learn, without being doomed.

Asoka is also organized: the courthouse, the lighthouse and -later- the factory are cheaper. Moreover, a part of the city upkeep is reduced.
The upkeep hassle is a critical part of the game, and it changed dramatically from CivIII. Many experienced players learnt it the hard way, and you will find plenty of threads about "how many cities?", "when to build a new city?" or "perfect pseudocrystal city positioning for dummies, in 3 volumes".
Nevertheless, I would say try to lay down 6 cities, each one of them not so far from the capital. Specialize one of them for trade/science (build cottages, libraries, one or two monasteries, Great Library) and one of them for production of military units (build mines, barracks, heroic epic). Experiment with the others. After 0 AD, start to think about further expansion - but always keep courthouses very high in the building queus of cities. You might even queue granary first and courthouse second.

Asoka starts with Mysticism. Grabbing an early religion is relatively easy (try Polytheism-Hinduism though, because AI civs starting with Mysticism as well usually gun for Meditation-Buddism) and this will help you A LOT with the problem of early city border expansion.
If you fail grabbing Hinduism, you will know it very early in the game. You may save the game when in 4000BC, and reload if you do not get the religion. This way you will learn how much you should focus on trade in those early 30 turns or so.
Build the shrine of the religion - this helps paying for your cities, too. If you like the religion concept of the game, you might want to hook up 4 wonders: the Spiral Minaret, the Sankore University, the Sistine Chapel and the Apostolic Palace. Then build a temple and a monastery of your state religion everywhere. They (and cathedrals too, but you can build them every three temples) will have the following extra benefits:
+ 2 :hammers: +2 :science: +2 :gold: +5 :culture:

I'd personally recommend Huayna Capac. His traits are powerful and balanced, so he lends himself to either economy style. A granary that produces culture is rather neat, especially as you'll usually get one in captured cities.

The early boost from the uniques contrasts nicely with traits that will be very beneficial in the long run.

Going down the list, I've tried Ramses and Sitting Bull. I did alright with Ramses but I got blown out of the water with Sitting Bull.
Started a game with Sitting Bull yesterday and by 1900 AD I was in 9th place in score out of 10 civs. I was managing about 1400 points with 5 cities while the Romans were in first with well over 3500 points and 24 cities. I just quit that game out of frustration when I discovered I was researching Renaissance era techs and some of the higher ranked civs were already pumping out Modern Armor and Gunships.

Oh well...it's a learning process. Off to the next recommended leader in the list...

Darius so long as you learn to utilize cottages .

Mansa is also good for a newb .

Darius so long as you learn to utilize cottages .

Mansa is also good for a newb .

Learning the "Cottage Economy" has proven to be a somewhat difficult for me to grasp for some reason. I try plant my starting city where it is, assuming it's in an area with decent tiles. When I expand, I look for certain things depending on what kind of city I want it to be (commerce, production, etc.) but then I usually end up with 10 mines and 8 farms or something. :lol:

I started another game with Sitting Bull, just to try my hand at the CE. I would appreciate it if someone could critique my save and tell me what I'm doing right / wrong. It has "Lock Modified Assets" & "No Barbarians" selected on a Hemispheres map on Epic speed.

Well, a true rookie at the door.. haha!! Ok Weasel, as you might already heard, in this game no matter what you choose or where you start the first thing you will learn to do is LOVE your civ, cherish your eagerly growing empire from a nomadic settler to a vast world dominant powerhouse. Keeping this in mind every leader/civ can be played with the proper strategy given the land, geography.. neighbours. If you did good with Ramses in warlords difficulty and not so good with Sitting Bull it was surely a problem of overlooking your potential strength with the latter.
All in all, Huayna Capac is probably the most easy starter for someone who won't be pushing the game to an edge. It gives enough room for drawbacks and mistakes. You will find financial is a great trait, not only for it's power but also because it is useful from 4000 BC to the day you quit or win, unlike other traits which become sort of obsolete as the game goes on or viceversa.
Oh.. also, read and make very good use of national wonders, where a true underground game engine stands.

Learning the "Cottage Economy" has proven to be a somewhat difficult for me to grasp for some reason. I try plant my starting city where it is, assuming it's in an area with decent tiles. When I expand, I look for certain things depending on what kind of city I want it to be (commerce, production, etc.) but then I usually end up with 10 mines and 8 farms or something. :lol:

There are alternatives to cottage economies, like specialist economy or religion economy (check my previous post on this thread), whose aim is not to overpower but to influence - that is, you aim for cultural or diplomatic win through Apostolic Palace.

There are no viable alternatives to city specialization, though. The core, bare minimum, critical part of any city specialization strategy is your science city, and for that to work you need a lot of trade coming in (cottages, intercity trade) and science buildings (libraries,...). Ideally, you want your science city to be:
1) your capital, if possible (palace give extra trade, bureaucracy helps a lot)
2) within reach of 2 or 3 good food sources (4 :food:)
3) with many grassland tiles or -a true bless- flood plains (to be cottaged)
4) on the coast (sea cities are SO MUCH BETTER for trade)
5) with some forests nearby to rush production of key wonders
Of course, in less than ideal situations you could -or have to-change, and that's when experience comes into play ;)
In ancient times, the building you most likely want are a granary, temple and monastery of your state religion, library, harbour and lighthouse if applicable.
As for wonders: Great Library, National Epic, Oxford University.
You really want to pop an early Great Scientist. The Great Library will almost surely grant you one, otherwise you need scientist specialist in a city for quite some time. With the guy, you build an Academy in your science city. It is a must-have strategy, the first you might want to learn.

You possibly have too many farms and mines, and not enough trade (the stuff that gets divided afterwards into feeding your income, research, culture and spying). In order to boost trade:
1) build cottages in some selected cities
2) go for intercity trade
For 2) to work you need to pick techs that raise the number of your trade routes sooner rather than later - i.e. currency. Moreover, the Great Lighthouse wonder is great if you have a bunch of coastal cities. Coupled with harbors (that increase trade route yeld) and a financial civ (+1 trade on tiles which already produce 2 trade or more), you could be rolling already.
Trade routes are best if foreign and from other continents, so DO sign open borders with other civs. They do it with one another, so if you don't you are losing out.
For coastal cities the Colossus is awesome too, but it gets obsolete quite early and with a tech (Astronomy) allowing you to build oceangoing ships, which is the way to go if you want intercontinental trade. So it is a mixed bag, in my opinion. If you can build it without too big a sacrifice then ok, otherwise you could skip it.

Also, DO trade techs, for precisely the same reason as for open border. Do it with caution, though. Try not to give military edges to aggressive civs (you will know Montezuma eventually) and not to feed fast teching civs too much.

If you see you are falling behind techs, then there is spying. Get Alphabet and start building spies. You might even want to pop an early Great Spy (the Great Wall helps, or else you have to run a spy specialist for ages) and "spend " him/her on the leading tech civ. It does wonders to your tech-leeching chances.

for people just starting out, as opposed to veteran-permanoobs like myself, i disagree with the thought that spiritual is a good trait to use. it's my favorite trait. but when you're first learning, you might not do a lot of civic swaps, if you're focused on other things. and then the benefit is wasted for the most part. mileages vary.

but basically, if you think you'll building and really focusing on your cities and how to specialize them, like the OP says, i don't think you'll really get a lot from spiritual. if you want to focus on diplomacy and how to avoid wars / play with AI relationships, that sort of thing, then spiritual will be probably the best one for that game. mileages vary.

What do you mean by you can't use your military?

Just look at the last line in my signature....

but not everybody knows exactly what that means. so they don't interpret it as "i'm a warbungler, not a warmonger." *giggle*

if you think you'll building and really focusing on your cities and how to specialize them, like the OP says, i don't think you'll really get a lot from spiritual. if you want to focus on diplomacy and how to avoid wars / play with AI relationships, that sort of thing, then spiritual will be probably the best one for that game. mileages vary.


One could run "caste system" or "serfdom" (depending if one is pumping GP/science or working tiles) and from time to time, when the people are fat and the cities ripe, let them feel the whip of "slavery" for a brief and bloody building spell. If you keep 3 or 4 good food production tiles per city, this strategy comes handy. Similarly, you can happily run representation and just go for spells of shopping frenzy with universal suffrage.
You can even "pop" an experienced army with an istantaneous switch to slavery/feudalism/theocracy.

Then, as you pointed out, you can be the diplomatic lover of the game - always changing to somebody else's favorite civ when (s)he asks, or before asking something yourself.

Of course you certainly know all of this goodness since you like the trait ;) I just think that these are strategies easy to grasp and implement for a newbie too. That's why I suggested spiritual.

I'd suggest Mansa Musa as he has probably the best early defense unit. Since you are financial and have a good special building (forge with +15% gold) you can really tech pretty fast.
And with spiritual as some others already said, you can chance civics as you like (no micromanaging as in "I'm gonna research this and that before I change the civic so I can save one turn of revolution")

While not a newbie to the 4x genre of games, I am new to the Civilization series.
I recently picked up all 3 games in the Civ. IV series (vanilla, Warlords, BtS) but have only played BtS so far.


I think more important than the choice of the leader is the choice of the game. I'd start with Vanilla and work my way over Warlords to BtS. That way you start with the basic game concepts, then add vasalls and as a last update add complex concepts like AP, advanced espionage or corporation.
Btw. I liked Bismarck. Production bonuses on forges, granaries and harbors solve some of your start up problems. Faster building some wonders now and then is also fun for beginners. But in general the game is rather balanced, so there are no super leaders or duds, don't worry too much!

Going down the list, I've tried Ramses and Sitting Bull. I did alright with Ramses but I got blown out of the water with Sitting Bull.
Started a game with Sitting Bull yesterday and by 1900 AD I was in 9th place in score out of 10 civs. I was managing about 1400 points with 5 cities while the Romans were in first with well over 3500 points and 24 cities. I just quit that game out of frustration when I discovered I was researching Renaissance era techs and some of the higher ranked civs were already pumping out Modern Armor and Gunships.

Oh well...it's a learning process. Off to the next recommended leader in the list...

This may not have been mentioned before, but, judging from the number of cities you have in that game, you must be playing a relatively large map. I would suggest starting with a the normal number of opponents (5, I think) on a Small map. That way, you are able to keep track of all your cities and what is going on more easily, which gives you more time to analyze your strategy, what the AI is doing, and getting into the diplomacy.

This may not have been mentioned before, but, judging from the number of cities you have in that game, you must be playing a relatively large map. I would suggest starting with a the normal number of opponents (5, I think) on a Small map. That way, you are able to keep track of all your cities and what is going on more easily, which gives you more time to analyze your strategy, what the AI is doing, and getting into the diplomacy.

All the maps I've played have been Huge size with 9 opponents (10 total civs).
Didn't know the map size would have that much of an effect on anything. :eek:

For beginners, a mix of Financial, Industrious, Charismatic, or Creative would be best. This means:

Huayna Capac- Fin/Ind, also has good early UU and UB
Willem- Fin/Cre, probably the best because of killer UB, UU's okay
Hannibal- Fin/Cha, little bit harder, because UU and UB need more skill to use
De Gaulle- Ind/Cha, all traits cause UU and UB are nothing to talk about
Louis XIV- Ind/Cre, same as above (they're both French)

Learning the "Cottage Economy" has proven to be a somewhat difficult for me to grasp for some reason. I try plant my starting city where it is, assuming it's in an area with decent tiles. When I expand, I look for certain things depending on what kind of city I want it to be (commerce, production, etc.) but then I usually end up with 10 mines and 8 farms or something. :lol:

I started another game with Sitting Bull, just to try my hand at the CE. I would appreciate it if someone could critique my save and tell me what I'm doing right / wrong. It has "Lock Modified Assets" & "No Barbarians" selected on a Hemispheres map on Epic speed.


To obtain the right amount of cottages develope a ratio for yourself and know the terrain . Say like 2 cottages to 1 farm , 3 cottages to 2 farms .
Hills are an automatic pick for mines or windmills and thus should serve to enhance their natural production bonuses .

You might want to also take a look at the tiles in your fat cross . I know its tempting to build farms right along a river but keep in mind civil service will give you a better option on where to plant farms . Think ahead ! Designate areas for farms and cottages .

What I usually do is pre-designate an area of the fat cross for farms and pre-designate for cottages . I won't need THAT MUCH food until I hit civil service because my cities would be capped by unhapiness and especially unhealthiness in the early game . Theres some fertile space for cottages there .

Know your terrain -

Flood plains : build a cottage for the increased gold bonus while still keeping a nice natural food bonus . ( Build a farm if your FINANCIAL) .

Grasslands : Farms

Grasslands by rivers : Cottages ( especially if your financial )

Plains : Can go either way , I tend to build more farms or even workshops if I'm lacking hills .

Do you have water around you? Water can serve as a nice way to have the cottage benifit and allowing you to build a higher farm to cottage ratio .

Basically , if you see a tile already putting out some commerce ( usually by water) , then you want to probably focus on increasing it with cottage improvements . If your financial , you'll have 3 commerce on a 1 commerce tile right off the bat , tough opportunity to pass up .


I noticed you tried sitting bull and a CE . A CE will work with anyone basically but leaders like sitting bull have a much better option in the SE , ( specialist economy .) Its almost a shame not to take advantage of a specliast economy if your a Philosophical leader .
I personally prefer a specialist economy simply because you can ' kick it off' sooner than a cottage economy . I like the fact that I need not worry about building cottages ( none at all in some cases) and I can focus my tiles on production and lots of food . Generating GPs also give you those heavy tech boosts as well .

I can't agree with some of the terrain distributions GT_OKEZ mentions above. Placing cottages along floodplains is generally a good idea unless you are going for a specialist city, even for Financial leaders. Open land not along rivers is prime cottaging material early in the game, and even some slots along the river can be used.

I must say that I, when I started with CIV, was addicted to Saladin of Arabia. I think it had something to do with me reading Sullla's Civilization Walkthrough (http://www.garath.net/Sullla/civ4intro.html) and craving religion and great people.

Saladin's been changed from Philosophical to Protective (?) now, so I don't play him as much anymore.

I agree that Willem is a good choice too.

Whatever you choose, most civs are good for leaning on lower difficulty levels.

Good luck, and happy civ-ing!

--ilovesimgolf

On the topic of cottage economy, I find it best to minimize the number of farms I have to make, as they are the most inefficient improvements. Much of my land remains unimproved till the middle ages (not willingly, I just don't build many workers) so watermill, windills, and workshops are common choices. Workshops suck at first, but watermills can give a riverside city some decent production. I find that windmills are often better than mines, because I think of windmills as farms with commerce. Cottages I usually build on non-riverside (unless financial), non-hilly terrain. Of course, this has to be adapted to the situation, but works as a guideline for improvements.