I've been searching through the forums, and the war academy for a few hours now, but I really don't have anything on how a person who's just starting out on Civ IV to go.

When I mean just, I've just played the tutorial and a single game in chieftain difficulty in which I could manage a victory only through having the highest score at 2050.

So, fellow CIV-ers, if that's the word, what should I do? Age of empires had a brilliant feature of having replays, so you could see build orders, actions of top players and learn. Unluckily enough, CIV doesn't have the option.

If I could start with few questions that really bug me -

Is there a tech research order? (Depending on a civ and location - like close to water build worker boats first, then get a worker, then a settler etc.?)

To give an example in Age of empires terms -

If you're planning a Knight rush -

You produce 22-23 villagers, about 7 on wood, 10 on farms, 3 on gold, 2 on stone in the dark age and then advance to the feudal age from the dark age.
In feudal, you build a blacksmith, a market, produce two more villagers and advance to the castle age and so on.

The build order is pretty rigid and close to optimal when you're playing a specific strategy. I'm not sure how I can translate this into Civ terms

How exactly do production, gold and commerce work?

What are the roles of various cities? I've seen them mentioned vaguely, but nothing really elaborates.

At what point does unhappiness come in? How do you prevent it? Does building 'happiness generating' buildings help? Won't they slow down your production? (I think happiness points are being added for free in each city for lower difficulty levels)

Do you manually put in roads? Or do you automate? How bad is automation compared to manual routing?

What is this 'Cottage Spam' I keep reading about?

Thanks for the help, Adios, I'm off to read somemore :)

I really don't have anything on how a person who's just starting out on Civ IV to go.

Agreed. That is lacking.

Just starting, read DaveMcW's "how to beat settler, ..." article in the Strategy Articles subforum. It's almost too sphinxlike to understand, but the point is that there only a few basic things you have to do to beat the AI at those levels - otherwise you can feel free to explore and play.

When you learn the basic basics a little more, read Sisiutil's Strategy for Beginners which is reasonably comprehensive and noobie-friendly.

Is there a tech research order?

Not really. The optimal thing to do is too dependent on the map.

There are loose patterns people would agree on up to a point, but you have to understand the game better to appreciate them.

How exactly do production, gold and commerce work?

This information is particularly lacking in the manual and beginner articles.

The number next to each city is its population. Each population point works one tile or one specialist. Play with Ctrl-Y (and Ctrl-R and Ctrl-T). Double click on the city and click on the white circles and (on the right) specialists to change what the population is doing. Each worked tile "harvests" the food, production (hammers), and commerce, from the tile, for the city. Each point of population eats 2 food per turn. Extra food gets saved. When enough food is accumulated, the city grows a population point.

The city's hammers (and surplus food if it's building a settler or worker) go toward its current build.

The sliders on the upper left of the main screen control the allocation across your whole empire of commerce :commerce: to research, :science:, wealth AKA gold :gold:, culture :culture:, and and espionage :espionage:.

Specialists produce :science:, :gold:, :culture:, and :espionage: directly, plus great people points :gp:, which eventually get cashed in for great people.

What are the roles of various cities?

It's up to you. Depends what buildings you put there, what tile improvements you build, etc.

Edit - I think I misunderstood the question. There are variations of these, but there are 4 main roles.
1. Worker/Settler pump - a city with high surplus food to build workers and settlers. Especially important at the beginning of the game when there is unclaimed land.
2. Production - high hammers, for building military units and world wonders
3. Commerce - high commerce, for science and wealth
4. Great person farm - high food, for running specialists to produce great people

At what point does unhappiness come in? How do you prevent it? Does building 'happiness generating' buildings help? Won't they slow down your production?

Each city gets some happy points and unhappy points. Each point of population is one point of unhappy. Read cabert's Ways into Happiness article.

In advanced play, happiness buildings are often so-so investments as you suspect --- but that's only if you understand what else to build and why, which will take a little while for you to learn.

Do you manually put in roads? Or do you automate? How bad is automation compared to manual routing?

Manual is somewhat better.

What is this 'Cottage Spam' I keep reading about?

Cottages are a tile improvement. Cottage spam is the style of play where your workers build a lot of them and your population works a lot of them.

I would probably recommend that you just play another game. Build 8-10 cities if you can and win a space race. If you're doing all the basic things right, you should be able to win a space race I think.

The questions you're asking are too complicated for chieftan! :)

Some answers:



Is there a tech research order? (Depending on a civ and location - like close to water build worker boats first, then get a worker, then a settler etc.?)

There are a couple of different ways to start. Some of the most popular are:

1) Food heavy. See what food you have and research techs that get you those - fishing (crab, clam, fish), agriculture (rice, wheat or corn), hunting (deer) or animal husbandry (sheep, cow, pig), then mining and BW (find copper and for chopping)
2) Religion first - works best if you start with mysticism - just go for an early religion, then go for the worker techs
3) head for Bronze working first, ignoring food techs for now.

A good way to start is go for a food giving tech, then mining and BW, then pottery->writing->alphabet so you can trade for the rest.

How exactly do production, gold and commerce work?

Every tile yields some number of hammers, food and commerce. Various improvments can increase those (sometimes at the expense of something else). Citizens work that work those tiles add those to what the city produces.

Production (hammers) are used to build buildings, wonder, units, settlers and workers (and can later be used to build wealth, research and culture) or military units.

Commerce gets turned into one of three things (four in BtS): Science (beakers), commerce or culture (espionage is the 4th) - how much of the cities commerce gets turned into those things depend on the sliders.

Specialists can be used to increase all those things, as well. And, under certain circumstances, buildings can also add hammers, gold or beakers.

The output of the city (hammers, beakers, gold) is subject to various multipliers based on buildings, civics, leader traits and resources.

What are the roles of various cities? I've seen them mentioned vaguely, but nothing really elaborates.

Generally, you run into 4 types of cities.
1) Commerce city - has lots of cottages and commerce bonuses such as gold, gems, silver, dyes, incense and silk, or is coastal and works a lot of sea tiles and has better trade routes
2) GP Farm - used to generate great people - has a lot of food and specialists
3) Military city - produces nearly only military.
4) General production city (making military, workers, settlers, wonders). Will make a lot of different things, depending on the needs of the civ at the time

One common pattern is the cottage economy, where you generate science through use of one or more commerce cities and keep the science slider very high. Another pattern is the specialist economy, where you generate science using scientists.


At what point does unhappiness come in? How do you prevent it? Does building 'happiness generating' buildings help? Won't they slow down your production? (I think happiness points are being added for free in each city for lower difficulty levels)

There are a lot of ways to get happiness - buildings are one of them, religion is another, civics are another. trading for happiness resources and using MP's are another way.

Do you manually put in roads? Or do you automate? How bad is automation compared to manual routing?

I never automate anything anymore.

What is this 'Cottage Spam' I keep reading about?

The basis for a cottage economy - put put a bunch of cottages.

Thanks a lot for all the answers. Also, this helped a lot!

http://www.civfanatics.com/files/Civ%20IV%20Basic%20Strategy%20Guide.pdf

Age of empires had a brilliant feature of having replays, so you could see build orders, actions of top players and learn. Unluckily enough, CIV doesn't have the option.

You might be interested in this announcement..

In CIV3 there was a tutorial mode option and while playing you had really good explanations about the mechanics of the games and the choices you should make and that is throughout the whole game. It's sad that there is not this option in CIV4 because the game thinks that the players already played at least one of the other games in the series.

BTW, there is too much variables in the game even at the start that make any videos very useful in the long run, in contrast or any game like Warcraft of Age Of Empire or Starcraft or whatever.

If you are after something like a video to take you through a game, you could look at TheMeInTeam's Let's Play video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWAessUDwws) on youTube. However, it might be better to wait until you're familiar with a few more of the basic concepts first.

Is there a tech research order? (Depending on a civ and location - like close to water build worker boats first, then get a worker, then a settler etc.?)

I would encourage experimentation. Food is fundamentally important so it is difficult to go wrong with learning at least one of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry or Fishing first depending on what you have in your capital. And then look at other techs to improve the tiles. Then look at techs for defence. Bronze Working, Iron Working and Animal Husbandry reveal the location of hidden and quite important resources, so getting these fairly early will help you decide where to put your cities.

How exactly do production, gold and commerce work?

It's complicated and you would be better off reading a comprehensive guide. However it isn't actually vitally important when first starting out. The computer will automatically adjust your technology rate down when you need money to pay for your empire. One thing that is important though is the computer will not adjust it back up if your situation changes. In general it is better to be gaining technology as fast as possible, so if the computer adjusts your tech rate down, keep an eye on it and move it back up if you start to produce a lot of surplus money.

What are the roles of various cities? I've seen them mentioned vaguely, but nothing really elaborates.

Forget about them at this stage. More important concepts to learn first. However one thing I will say is that almost every type of city needs at least a decent bit of food.

At what point does unhappiness come in? How do you prevent it? Does building 'happiness generating' buildings help? Won't they slow down your production? (I think happiness points are being added for free in each city for lower difficulty levels)

Yes they will slow down your production but they are quite important. It is, like many concepts in the game, a trade-off. Having more happiness (and more food) means (in general) bigger cities. Bigger cities ultimately mean more production and commerce. The trade-off is time. Is it better to have what you would otherwise produce earlier?

Do you manually put in roads? Or do you automate? How bad is automation compared to manual routing?

Yes, I have always used workers manually so I can't really answer that.

What is this 'Cottage Spam' I keep reading about?

Cottages are a worker improvement (with pottery) that gets better over time. The main point of them is providing more commerce (which becomes technology and money). They are a little underwhelming when you first build them but ultimately end up extremely good. Note that the city actually has to work them for them to improve, building them alone is not enough. They are a good idea.


The single most important tip I got when learning Civ4 was to use the ALT key to give you combat odds. Combat doesn't work quite how I thought it did first of all from reading the manual.