I got the game for christmas and my skills have developed that I more or less win Immortal 90+ percent of the time now, probably going to attempt diety soon, tho if its anything like moving from emperor to immortal it could be a while. I remember trying to learn the game and looking at the war academy or whatever, and almost everything that I read there now seems pretty nub like, so I figured id share my own quick tips that Ive learned for the newer players.

1. With a granary, you want +4 food in each city while its growing, unless of course there are extra bonus food sitting around, but basically dont build any extra +3 farms if you already have +4 food in the city, at the same time, unless you are done growing, make sure it has +4 food. (the optimum point might be +3, I just did some quick math way back when and determined it was +4, not entirely sure tho).

2. Find one city, count up all the hills/tree plains, and the food that you have to support it, and see if you can support at least 16 - 17 production, (usually you will get more like 20). It is very important to have at least this one site early on that builds the heroic epic and is solely devoted to building troops.

3. Anarchy is really, really bad, dont switch to vassalage if you plan on going to bueracracy 10 turns later. Dont have a golden age, if you dont plan on having a major revolution during that time period. Honestly, each turn of anarchy you are really hurting yourself severly.

4. if you have 3 production cities, settle your first great general in one and build ground troops like macemen, build a stables in one and get mounted, and the third just builds longbows. The two main assault troops will be level 2 coming out, and you can live with level 1 longbows. As your empire gets bigger youll get more generals and can have more production cities that will support level 2 military units. (IE you dont need to run theocracy or vassalage, beuracracy and organized religion are both very good).

5. Dont make your capitol your gp farm if you are running bureaucracy, specialists do not benefit from the +50 percent bonus'. DO build an academy in your capitol if you do run bureauracy. the 50 percent bonus from bureaucracy comes before the library/academy effects. IE, if you have 100 coins coming into a city, it will get +50 percent once from bureaucracy and go up to 150. If you are running research at 100%, it will then multiply 150 by 100% + 50%. This brings you up to 225, and is why bureaucracy capitols with an academy can get some very ridiculous research levels.

6. Try playing with spiritual, philisophical, or creative leaders, these are good traits.

7. count your cities, multiply the number by 1.5, round up. Thats the number of workers you should have at any time, add one or two if theres a ton of jungle to clear.

8. Please feel free to add anything or ask questions/argue. Yes Im studying for exams and Im quite sidetracked at this point.

1. Why?

3. Anarchy also gets less and less important when you go for the longer games (i.e. anarchy is 2 turns in marathon, but 2 turns is of little consequence there). Oh, and don't use vassalage unless you actually need it for troop build-up.

6. Or financial, or industrial, or charismatic, or organized, or something that fits into your civ (like an expansive Carthaginian), or something that you have never tried before as to learn more about the game.

8. Remember all such tips are situational, as everything is in CivIV. For example, even though specializing your cities are vitally important, sometimes you just have enough units for whatever victory you want, and as such no unit builder machine is needed, and it can turn to other projects.

1. Yea I'm not too sure about this as well. In what case would you apply this? Are we talking about slavery? SE/FE/CE?

4. I think this is one of the typical advises that I find to be useless. Don't worry I read it in plenty of other strategy articles but I disagree with them. In a lot of scenarios you can avoid warfare trough diplomacy, it wouldn't be the first time I launch a space ship while my cities are protected by archers/axes. :)

5. I agree and disagree. Early game your capital can be the best possible GP farm. Build a few wonders & run specialists, something you often can't do if you use another city as gp farm. Mid-late game I'd agree, wonders start going obsolete so you can assign another city as GP farm and make your capital a cottage city.

6. Any trait serves its use but it's up to the player to leverage it.

8. Good luck with your exams. ;)

Mid-late game I'd agree, wonders start going obsolete so you can assign another city as GP farm and make your capital a cottage city.

I do not believe culture and GPPs go dead when a wonder becomes obsolete.

In a lot of scenarios you can avoid warfare trough diplomacy, it wouldn't be the first time I launch a space ship while my cities are protected by archers/axes. :)


I can't believe you're wasting hammers on axes :p



@PopHut: GPPs obsolete, culture doesn't.

I agree with Priah and PopHut.

@Burn: SE/FE/CE are all BAD! Specialize your cities for at least one of each.

I do not believe culture and GPPs go dead when a wonder becomes obsolete.

the specialists from great library will disapear however...

5. I agree totally

So many times I have turned my capital into a GP farm only to regret it later. Capital is too important for that. Early planning for GP city is essential. I love sites with atleast 2 food resources (fish, corn, pigs) and lots of forests for speeding up that Great library if I manage to get Literature early enough. Not to mention National epic.

1. Yea I'm not too sure about this as well. In what case would you apply this? Are we talking about slavery? SE/FE/CE?


4. I think this is one of the typical advises that I find to be useless. Don't worry I read it in plenty of other strategy articles but I disagree with them. In a lot of scenarios you can avoid warfare trough diplomacy, it wouldn't be the first time I launch a space ship while my cities are protected by archers/axes. :)

I've only ever won every game through domination, everything else just seems fake to me. Creative victory is something youd never achieve against a thinking human imo, space victory is essentially being more powerful than everyone else but being too lazy to go ahead and conquer everyone, it seems domination can come earlier. Do you really play Emperor+ without having a heroic epic city?

5. I agree and disagree. Early game your capital can be the best possible GP farm. Build a few wonders & run specialists, something you often can't do if you use another city as gp farm. Mid-late game I'd agree, wonders start going obsolete so you can assign another city as GP farm and make your capital a cottage city.




1. Ill get back to you on 1, I think theres some math that can be done to describe my point tho.

4. I've only ever won every game through domination, everything else just seems fake to me. Creative victory is something youd never achieve against a thinking human imo, space victory is essentially being more powerful than everyone else but being too lazy to go ahead and conquer everyone, it seems domination can come earlier. Do you really play Emperor+ without having a heroic epic city?

5.
I'm mostly trying to say that running beuracracy when your capitol is your gp farm is about the dumbest thing you can do. The +50 percent to coins does not get applied to specialists, you want beuracracy for a strong hybrid city.

1. Ill get back to you on 1, I think theres some math that can be done to describe my point tho.

4. I've only ever won every game through domination, everything else just seems fake to me. Creative victory is something youd never achieve against a thinking human imo, space victory is essentially being more powerful than everyone else but being too lazy to go ahead and conquer everyone, it seems domination can come earlier. Do you really play Emperor+ without having a heroic epic city?

5.
I'm mostly trying to say that running beuracracy when your capitol is your gp farm is about the dumbest thing you can do. The +50 percent to coins does not get applied to specialists, you want beuracracy for a strong hybrid city.

1. Sure take your time, just wondering what the idea behind it is.


4. Yes I understand your point. But if you really think about it, people usually get advised to "build more units" because they got attacked by some civ and had no defense. While in reality this says more about bad diplomatic knowledge then about the amount of units you have.

My point being, the advise to build more units will be directed to the peaceful player. Which imho is a wrong way to look at the problem in general. Imho the key would be to be more aware of the global diplomacy, that way you will know when to build units or not. The AI behaviour is pretty predictable, the further you advance in the game, the more you can predict the AI. Hence I usually end up with axes as defense in a peaceful game. After religions start kicking in, patterns will become clear and you can try predicting the diplomatic development. Of course I will never claim that I play "perfect" diplomacy or that I can predict every move the AI will make. (or that I never need to build units .. sometimes you just know sh*t is going to hit the fan sooner or later. :p)

I would even dare to say the same for warmongering. You want as few units as possible until you reach a certain point where you have a military tech advantage. From there you can whip/draft yourself into a superior army, making all those inferior units you have build in the past stand in the dark. If you understand my point of view, you can conclude that I have quite a lot of games where I don't build the HE. My military production often comes in spikes rather then steady unit production. Of course there are games were I DO build it. :)


5. Well bureaucracy doesn't only give 50% commerce, hammers will be of quite some importance. I don't know how you or other players manage their capital but in most of my cottage capitals, I end up working as many cottages/as few mines as possible. So in my case a non cottage capital will have more hammers. If my capital doesn't suit cottages I will either:

- Move the capital, which is imho the best but not always possible.
- Put the hammers to good use and build some wonders & run specialists. It will generate more gpp, which is an advantage on its own. I would also be likely to settle GP's for the free hammers.

But I don't disagree with you though, I prefer a nice cottage capital as well. It's just that sometimes the land forces you to farm rather then cottage.


@Pophut and Sun: Apparently Pophut is right on gpp not going obsolete. I did a quick test in WB. I find it quite amazing that I had a wrong understanding of such a basic game feature after playing this game for so long. :lol: :old:

All your points have been pointed out before, some more numerous than others.

Sounds like fine tips although they are all situational and some of the irrelevant to my play.

I got the game for christmas and my skills have developed that I more or less win Immortal 90+ percent of the time now, probably going to attempt diety soon, tho if its anything like moving from emperor to immortal it could be a while. I remember trying to learn the game and looking at the war academy or whatever, and almost everything that I read there now seems pretty nub like, so I figured id share my own quick tips that Ive learned for the newer players.

8. Please feel free to add anything or ask questions/argue. Yes Im studying for exams and Im quite sidetracked at this point.

Immortal is somewhat impressive, as a working man I'm far from that kind of progression (i haven't played any of the earlier civs tho).

8. what version/expansion do use (ie. vanilla, warlords, bts)?

My games went a lot better when doing more warfare.
Learning micromanagement, how GPP works and treating pre biology plains as tundra also helped.

@Pophut and Sun: Apparently Pophut is right on gpp not going obsolete. I did a quick test in WB. I find it quite amazing that I had a wrong understanding of such a basic game feature after playing this game for so long. :lol: :old:

Me either :crazyeye:

I always thought GPP stay