I hear this a lot, and I have some idea what it means

E.g lot of food = lot of specialists

Is there some detailed article explaining how to "play the map"

Thread title changed. Please avoid self-censorship.

I hear this a lot, and I have some idea what it means

E.g lot of food = lot of specialists

Is there some detailed article explaining how to "play the map"

Read all the guidelines, then start a game a use the best of those hints for a solid game.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/cityspecialization.php and http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/city_specialization.php http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/specialization.php might have some of what you are looking for. Playing the land often detail much more than just how to specialize your cities though. What tech paths you purpsue and your opponents also affect a lot of things... As do your civ and difficulty. Read enough walkthroughs and you'll pick up some tricks for most situations, and you should be able to extend them to new situations.

The Sun-Tzu is very applicable in these circumstances. I only have a Dutch translation, but from an English quote page I think the proper translations is:

"Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards... Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain."

Applied to CIV, I think it means there are a number of conclusions:

- know the break points or 'sweet spots', ie the low ground for the water to run to: know which settings work well with each other and know how to administer your empire and army to get the most out of it. This is not playing the map, this is optimizing your play, and is mostly a short-term matter: if CIV is a sort of optimization problem, there are many local optima, it there are many "low places" toward which the river can run, like valleys or lakes in the mountains. These optima will always be better than the surrounding land, because certain things go well with each other: specialist and CS+Representation+philo, towns and US+FS+fin, military and AGGR+Theo, etc.. These local optima are determined by the rules.
- However, which of these local optima is the global optimum is determined by the settings, your leader, the map, the opponents, etc.. This is true on the small scale (ie city specialization depends on terrain, but normally a well thought out specialization beats a generic city in raw yield) but also on the large scale: what kind of economy, what tech path, what moment to gear up to and declare war, etc., all depend on circumstances.

In other words: there are many possible paths from beginning to end; which are good and which are bad is determined by the mechanics of the game (local optimization). However, which is best out of the good paths is determined by circumstances, choosing this path based on your information is playing the map.

Agreeing with Oyzar and Mad, there is no "guide to playing the map": you need to know all the good paths (read all the "X Economy", "Optimizing X", "Guide to X" articles) and then choose the best path based on your estimation of how well each choice will fare given the circumstances.

I have an emerging idea that there's "playing the map" and there's "playing the leader". Playing the map requires open mindedness and flexibility and waiting until the game has taken shape then deciding which victory is to be pursued. Playing the leader is more about deciding before hand which course of actions to take and exploiting the strengths of the civ you pick.

They're not mutually exclusive, but I think favoring one at the expense of the other causes sub optimal game play. Generating a new map then trying to follow a writeup for a certain leader and following the articles tactics and strategy without heed to the playing field would be playing the leader without playing the map. Playing through a game without exploiting the your civs' UB, UU and leaders traits would be failing to play the leader.

I play a lot of HoF gauntlets so often we are told what VC to go for, and then pick leaders which should be good for that.

My Cathy walkthroughs I specifically chose Cathy for her flexibility.

if you see a bunch of jungle tech towards ironworking

if you see a bunch of fish and crab then tech fishing

if your enemy is Babylon attack with Chariots or Archers

if your enemy is Egypt build spears

if your enemy if montezuma have some axemen

a map with lots of hills = guerilla promotion
map with alot of forest or jungle= woodsman promotion
map with lots of water = build a navy

from "Memoirs of Killing Everyone in Civ4 on Multiplayer"

Troy, Attacko, whoever you are, can you give me a plausible situation (other than complete and utter desparation) when using archers as your primary attacking force isn't a completely stupid idea?

basically, don't ever walk into a game determined to win a particular victory, or use a particular economy or exploit a particular beeline. play each map in the optimal manner, decided based on the land available, the leader used and the opponents faced.

"can you give me a plausible situation (other than complete and utter desparation) when using archers as your primary attacking force isn't a completely stupid idea?"

yes i can.

"the pawn is the soul of the game" philidor (chess guy)

"The Bowery Gambit" -attackopedia

an archer rush, (Combat, Drill mix) three or four city build, promoted bow stack and a continent shared by two. The promotion line will allow for a medic upgrade.
Utilizing two techs, Hunting and Archery is sufficient with chopping coming down the pike for monument culture boost or more archers.

Usually a building rival will have a few axe or so and an archer or two. nothing that a stack of something as simple as 11 archers can't handle.

Situational uses- playing against- Babylon close by, - no metal, no horse,
metal but facing babylon, horse but facing Pascal,
The "Bowery" random event- giving free combat to archers

"But lets say you teched slowly, no religion, your armies lost every battle, your on tundra with one wheat and a whale with no bronze or horse and your not sure how to play the game or what a library does and an enemy stack of axe just wiped out one of your three cities. Most would quit, reload, or cry home to mama. But should you? Lets look at the real situation. You have Archers."

from "Attacko's the Art of Defense in Civ4"

Attacko needs to read Defendo's art of grammar in CFC posts.

Fact- First decent unit- archer- that you don't need resources for

Fact- Combat 2 archers via barbarian and wolf promotions =95 % of the time

Fact- Future writing will be bad spelling, bad links, bad syntax, and in the future people will think OMG means "on my goggles"

Fact- the archer is the superior

an archer rush, (Combat, Drill mix) three or four city build, promoted bow stack and a continent shared by two. The promotion line will allow for a medic upgrade.

Utilizing two techs, Hunting and Archery is sufficient with chopping coming down the pike for monument culture boost or more archers.I'm assuming that by 'three or four city build' you mean that you have atleast three or four cities building archers. and since you're chopping out archers you must have bronze working. and thus wouldnt it have been better play to build one of those three or four cities in a location where copper was available and spend those chops on axemen instead?Usually a building rival will have a few axe or so and an archer or two. nothing that a stack of something as simple as 11 archers can't handle.right so you need 11 or so archers to deal with 'a few axes and an archer or two' that's a good reason NOT to use archers as your primary attacking force right there. and if we assume that the AI has more than one city (since you have three or four), each protected with 'a few axes and an archer or two' then that's a damn good reason not to attack with archers, and build units that have a base strength above that of the most likely defender (archers).Situational uses- playing against- Babylon close by, - no metal, no horse, metal but facing babylon, horse but facing Pascal,
The "Bowery" random event- giving free combat to archersIf you are saying that Babylon has no horses or metals, but you have horses near to pascal and a metal close to babylon, then the logical thing to do would be to grab the horses, and run him down with chariots before he can settle a city to grab the metal and build spears/axes. Trattacko, if you want to continue this make another thread or respond in a PM so that this thread doesnt get completely derailed.

and in an on topic note, playing the map basically means that you shouldn't go into a game with a predetermined plan because the map might favour a different strategy (or make your predetermined strategy very difficult, if not impossible). for example if you do a random leader on a fractal map, and you end up isolated with Augustus Ceaser with stone and marble in your BFC, your strategy's going to have to change.

"playing the map" = mastering Civ4 imo. knowing how to read a map, opponents, situation, etc. and employ the best strat to give you the best chance to win = need for very strong grasp of this game.

And of course "playing the map" is but one aspect of "playing the game." The rest include what were already explained: your civilization and leader, those of your opponents, desired victory condition (if limited), other limiting factors like "no courthouses allowed", etc.

Fact- First decent unit- worker- that you don't need resources for

Fact- worker got 2 moves = fastest early unit

Fact- Build 3 workers from start =95 % of the time you have 3 times more worker if you reach your opponents border

Fact- the worker is the superior

I used the "play the map" sentence in my articles in the sense of "expand your territory and research the techs according to what you see".
If you see a map filled with happy bonuses, tech towards what you need to use them (mining, hunting, calendar, ...) and settle the cities in time to get them.
If you see a map totally lacking happy bonuses, tech hereditary rule and build troops.

Same for health, which is usually a lot simpler = settle the rice, the wheat and the corn, which are the best cities anyway to begin with most of the time.