HELP!! Some advice please

I am writing this to ask for some help, some hints, clues of what I am doing wrong. Even if someone can respond to a few of my questions I would be grateful.

I have come from Civ V and BERT which I have really enjoyed and been successful and by that meaning I have had a lot of wins with all victory conditions at quite high levels. I have enjoyed the journey and the destination. With Civ IV I am enjoying the journey but can’t get a win at all after 50+ hours at Warlord difficulty. I have watched a few videos of games but I am not really keen to sit through a whole game from start to finish as I would rather play my self.

I start out well and by move 100 I am always usually in the lead point wise and seem to have a massive lead of well over 100 points but as the game goes on I am usually defeated militarily or I get so far behind that I end up losing in a science race or out of the blue one of the AI players suddenly wins culturally. So my mid/late game is obviously poor. In Civ V I knew strategies of how to win any condition but I don’t really know what to aim for in this game.

Any way I have a few questions which I hope some successful players can help me with.
• Do you really need to build so many cities in this game compared with Civ V… to keep up I seem to have to spam cities.
• How many workers do I need and what is the best use for them..for example is it better to build cottages than farms? Do I need to improve every tile in my city and put roads to everything?
• In the city screen there are greyed out specialists…would should I do with them?
• When I look at the information graphs some of the AI’s are not shown so it is hard to know how I am going against them.
• I seem to have to have massive armies to remain safe and my armies seem to always lose.
• I have concentrated in some games on building a lot of religious buildings and cultural building to get my culture up..is this a good idea?
• How do I set up trade with other nations?
• Religion seems to be important…I sometimes have two or more religions in my cities..is this good? What should I do with my missionaries? Is it possible to change a rival’s civilization to your religion if they already have a religion?
• How do I make another civ my vassal?
• After establishing my empire by 80/150 turns what should I aim to be doing?

* nopes, quality cities can get you far enuf

* 1 worker / city is my average number. For tile improvements you need understanding of cities in Civ4 first (building cottages always works thou, for learning). Cities rarely use all tiles in their radius, it matters more how you use the good ones. Food = most important, allows you to use more cottages for example. Roads are used for unit travel, connecting resources and cities. No need to put them everywhere.

* Grey specialist slots means you have no building (or Caste System) to hire them.
Library i.e. gives 2 scientist slots, market 2 merchants (look at buildings for that )

* you need espionage points assigned to see their demos

* Diplo can also make you safe, some AIs will not attack when pleased for example

* nopes, you rarely need more culture than 1 border pop

* Connected by road or rivers or sea (with sailing and open borders)

* Religion is much less important than new players think, it's biggest use is usually diplo.
Let AIs found them, and spread to you, then look who you want on your side

* They sometimes offer peace vassal, if you are bigger and stronger. Or attack them and have war success, until they give up

* Researching military techs for example for nice units, and then building them


Many questions, seems you need almost all basics and peoples will soon suggest help i am sure.
Youtube videos are good, learning by watching from the right peoples (like ThemeinTeam).
Watching full games is not too useful anyways, first ~30 minutes would show you most basics.
Strategy section here is great, you can set up example games where others will guide you.

The most important thing is how to develop your economy quickly -- the first 75 or 100 turns. If you screw up the first 100 turns, you're going to be really far behind. You're incorrect that your problem is the mid-late game. 100 points is not a lot of points to be ahead by on warlord, you need to practice your early development. that's the most important.

Worker as your very first build is almost always best. (occasional exceptions for fishing boats, if your best food square is fish. ). Typically you want to get a worker and develop your best food square in your capital ASAP... What you tech first is dependent on what your worker needs to develop... food is your top priority at first. Working unimproved tiles is bad, you're not getting much benefit. You need to build enough workers (typically 1 worker per city) to develop all of the tiles you are working and also chop forests for extra hammers to produce settlers and workers faster.

The first things you tech should all be economy techs:

Hunting if you have deer.
Agriculture if you have corn, wheat or Rice.
Animal husbandry if you have cows, sheep or pigs.
Mining if you have gold, gems, or silver.
Bronze working if you have a lot of forests to chop.

after this tech pottery since you probably want a bunch of cottages no matter what, then tech writing so you can build a library in your capital.

By 2000 bc (turn 50) you want about 4 cities including a good population 3 capital city. If you can't get this most games by about 2000 bc, you need to practice your opening. Note that you can re-start and replay the same game from 4000 bc if you load games from your auto saves folder. (Sometimes you can delay the cities to build wonders or something but in general you ought to have 4 cities by 2000 bc)

as for your specific points:

>Do you really need to build so many cities in this game compared with Civ V… to keep up I seem to have to spam cities.

Typically you build about 4-6 cities pretty early and then conquer a whole bunch more. civ IV is usually a warmonger's game, unless you're going for cultural victory.

• How many workers do I need and what is the best use for them..for example is it better to build cottages than farms? Do I need to improve every tile in my city and put roads to everything?

You absolutely do need to improve every tile you're working, if you're not improving tiles at roughly the same speed your civilization grows, you probably have too few workers. You don't need roads except for travel and trade routes, so not every square, but you want to connect all of your cities and connect yourself to foreign civs for better trade.

Farms and cottages are both good. I usually prefer cottages except on special agriculture resources, although if a city has very low food you can put a farm on a river somewhere. But make sure you're using one or the other and not working undeveloped tiles.

Typically one worker per city in the early game, and a little bit less than that once most of your cities are developed.


• In the city screen there are greyed out specialists…would should I do with them?

That's just a list of the specialists you'll be able to use later. If they're grayed out they aren't specialists you actually have. You can't work specialists until you build the requisite building for them (libraries for scientists, etc). Specialists are mostly for the great person points. You'll probably want to tech writing and get a library around 1000 or 2000 bc, and work two scientists specialists in your capitol until you get a great scientist, which you can use to make an academy.

• When I look at the information graphs some of the AI’s are not shown so it is hard to know how I am going against them.

Well you need to discover them first!

• I seem to have to have massive armies to remain safe and my armies seem to always lose.

You probably are behind in technology. You should build more cottages early so you can tech faster. Should also build a library in your capital and run scientists specialists as already mentioned above. Once you get an academy (from the great scientist) your technology rate will improve.

• I have concentrated in some games on building a lot of religious buildings and cultural building to get my culture up..is this a good idea?

No, not unless you're specifically going for cultural victory, which is sortof advanced, I don't recommend it for a beginner.

Make sure you are not researching religions early -- you don't want an early religion. You need economic techs and if you switch to the wrong religion early the other civs will hate you. Religion in this game is mostly about diplomacy so don't try to found a religion yourself unless its 1000 bc and nobody on your continent has one yet. Just pick the one that is most popular on your continent.

• How do I set up trade with other nations?

You need to resarch writing. You need to discover one of their cities. You need a trade route connection to them (either roads leading to their city or if you have sailing, a coastal connection between coastal cities works). Once you get all of this, go to the trading screen and ask for open borders.

• Religion seems to be important…I sometimes have two or more religions in my cities..is this good? What should I do with my missionaries? Is it possible to change a rival’s civilization to your religion if they already have a religion?

Religion is really not that important. Don't build missionaries. It is possible to change a rival's religion, yes, but for all of the hammers you spent on missionaries trying to do that, you could have just taken them over.

• How do I make another civ my vassal?

You need to tech vassalage and then beat them into the ground militarily. Once you're kicking their ass, go to the trade window and see if they're willing to capitulate. there's a "Capitulation" option in the roughly upper left part of the screen. If the option is in white text they're willing to capitulate, red if not. If you don't see this option you're probably playing vanilla civ IV without the expansions in which case there are no vassal civilizations. Also if you get someone to really friendly sometimes they'll vassal even without a war.

• After establishing my empire by 80/150 turns what should I aim to be doing?

Typically you pick a unit that you want to "break out" with, tech towards it and then conquer as much as you can. Literally any unit will work for this up to about emperor difficulty. Some work better than others, sometimes you can build a mix of units for your armies. Try different things and see what you like. Most popular on high difficulty levels are cuirassers, horse archers, or some kind of ancient mix involving catapults.

Honestly, it's probably actually better to focus more on the early game (100 turns or so) than victories at this point. Get down the basics, mentioned above. IV is a far more complex game than V.

I recommend just moving on up to Noble or Prince now. Below Noble skews things to much in your favor and gives false impressions of your progress. Just understanding some basics and practice right now and you will do fine on Noble or Prince (which are both fairly similar in difficulty). In other words, feel a little pain in order to gain.

It would also help us to know the overall settings you are playing with currently.

Some of your questions have been addressed above, but I will list some relevant points that might prove helpful (not all are "answers" but rather things to think on and learn):

1) Don't get caught up with the religion stuff, especially early. Food and worker techs are far more important. Think of religion now mainly in terms of diplomacy. AIs will usually spread some of those early religions to you for free anyway..and, if not, no biggie.

2) Size of your empire is often relative, especially in terms of victories. Large empires are better for Space as it allows you to generate more beakers. However, you can be rather small for Culture victories. In fact, you only need 3 cities, but at least 9 is best, depending on speed/size. Domination assumes big, but in IV you can almost win that by vassalizing everyone. So in short, expand according to your goals, but a reasonable rule for now is 6 cities by 1AD.

3) Score is pretty much irrelevant in this game, and certainly irrelevant early. Don't get caught up in that. Score will come as you improve and grow but you don't win by it unless going for Time victory which is meh.

4) Play the map. This has multiple meanings really, but think about the land, resources and proximity of the AIs and play accordingly.

5) Workers and worker management is highly important to improving your game. It's not just so much how many you have, but how you use them. Good players can do more with less, but at least have 1 per city if not more. But more importantly, think about how you use them. Is that road really needed? Or would a chop be better? Or improvement? Does this worker need to make all these improvements if I'm going to be whipping or running specialists for now...and the cities can grow that large do to happiness for now anyway?

6) Slavery = most powerful thing in the game. Learn to use it and understand why granaries are so important.

7) Specialists are important, especially scientists early. You generally want to get a couple running soon after your first library to pop a Great Scientist (GS) for an academy in your capital (usually). Provides a nice boost to research. Then some GSs for bulb strategies. Great Merchants are also nice for trade missions. The other Great People aren't as important accept Great Artists, ofc, for Culture wins. (If playing the longer game, look to great a GP farm out of a high food city - at least two or three strong food specials. This city will run tons of specialists during golden ages while in Caste System..usually scientists or merchants depending on what you are trying to do)

8) Currency - Key tech. Something you should focus on getting to as soon as possible via Maths or Alpha. Once you have Currency, new doors open. You can trade extra resources for gold per turn. You can trade older techs for chunks of gold, as well as maps. Not to mention they passive boost to commerce from the extra trade routes.

9) After Currency, Civil Service is your next big goal. This tech allows for another powerful civic in Bureaucracy, if you been developing your capital correctly (i.e., cottages). That is, if you capital is suited land-wise for this, sometimes you move the Palace to a better cottage city (think rivers and flood plains)

10) Lastly, build with purpose. there's really only two must build buildings - granaries and forges. The rest is either situational, very situational, or useless. For instance, markets. Very expensive building early on for little gain.

Skulbow said:

• I have concentrated in some games on building a lot of religious buildings and cultural building to get my culture up..is this a good idea?

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Buildings are mostly underpowered in civ 4. An ad hoc decision to build a building is often a poor decision unless you really know what you are doing. This is in contrast to units and wealth, which are hardly ever poor decisions. You can win games just building these:

• granary
• workers
• settlers
• military units
• Wealth

The same logic applies to wonders. Always consider their opportunity cost, like Pyramids being 3-to-5 foregone Settlers.

Good Buildings:

• You put a granary in every city, basically.
• 1 Library usually works through the mid-game; in the capital and/or a strong food site; assign scientists and generate an early GS with it.
• Production cities get a forge. Forge is a pretty good building.
• In the late game (late industrial, modern, and future), cities can get actual returns from cap relief and lots of multipliers - this is when buildings start making more sense.
• The odd, un-intuitive thing here is that you get access to stuff like the marketplace and coliseum early, but there's no point in building them pre-modern.

Thanks people...some excellent suggestions. A few things I am doing wrong is spending too many resources on buildings, religion...although I hardly build forges because they make my cities unhealthy and I tend to build markets in every town. I have gone crazy in my games trying to win by building culture buildings, building every wonder I can get so I have maybe been on a wrong slant.
I think this game is a lot more unforgiving with mistakes than Civ V and BERT.

Some excellent advice here. My two cents:

IMO, 1 worker/city is too low in the early game, you want to shoot for 1.5 per city at least until about 1AD. Unlike in Civ5 you can stack workers and you should usually try to have them working in pairs, ordering them to build the same improvement in a given tile so they finish faster. In my experience there is not much reason to have more than 2 building a given improvement at one time. Never miss an opportunity to steal a worker during wartime, you will almost always have something for them to do.

As others have stated, a strong opening is essential to future success. Some of the things I consider important are:

* Worker techs, as nate64 indicated. In addition to those on his list you might want to consider Fishing and/or Masonry if you have resources in the BFC that can be improved with those technologies. I often delay Pottery for a bit if I have an early commerce-generating resource available (Fur, Gold, Silver, Gems, or Marble).

* An early strategic resource is usually important because Warriors won't cut it for very long. If you went for AH and happen to have Horse nearby, that's ideal. Otherwise this is a good excuse to go for Bronze Working to reveal Copper. In the early game Copper's as good as Iron for purely defensive purposes, but if I don't have Horse or Copper I may as a last resort go for Iron Working.

* Avoid overbuilding your cities in the early game, focus on units, particularly military. You want a Granary in every city and a Barracks or two. Maybe Monuments for border pop but skip them in any city that's generating any culture by itself.

* Writing is important for open borders as well as getting an early GS.

* I think two of the most underrated technologies in the Classical Era are Monarchy and Calendar. Monarchy unlocks the Hereditary Rule civic which is an easy way to maintain happy cities - just don't become too dependent on it because you'll probably want to switch to Representation or Universal Suffrage eventually. Calendar not only unlocks several luxury resources but also things like Banana that can really boost growth. I tend to go for these fairly early.

* Be careful about building wonders, especially in the early game. You are most often better served investing the resources in population growth and expansion. That said, there are several powerful early game gambits that involve going for particular wonders. You'll find a lot more information about these on this forum, but you should know when to use them.

Have fun!

I've encounter some civ4 YouTube videos that focus on the first 100 turns. I can't remember who played them, nor have I ever watched them. But you might want to consider checking them out. Might help you out in your situation. On a side note, I'm a long time civilization player going back to the days of civ2. In past games constructing lots of buildings in cities and wonder whoring was a means to succes. This is a "trap" so to speak. It took me a long time to break the habits I'd developed from past civ games.

How many workers do I need and what is the best use for them..for example is it better to build cottages than farms?

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1 worker per city. In the beginning of the game I'd build the following improvements in this order; Farm (food) > Strategic > Luxuries > Hills > and finally Cottages (mainly Capital - use tile sharing). Emphasis should be on which will expedite all your builds (food improves the whip).

Some players like Sampsa! ^^, hold off on cottages longer than normal to really accentuate all those . One other tip is to leverage your leaders traits! Take Industrious for example. That 50% bonus makes it quite the financial trait via World and National Wonder fail gold. Throw in some more bonuses via marble/stone and you can accumulate large masses of gold.

I'll drop in my 2 cents as well on this.

As a civ 5 player, the most important things you have to understand are the differences between civ5 and civ4.

In civ 4, you do need a lot more cities than you do in civ 5. In civ 5, you typically have 2 - 3 cities before 1 AD, whereas in civ 4, you typically wanna have at least 4 - 6. Throughout the entire game, you also wanna have way more cities than in civ5, usually, you want about double or trippe of whatever youd have in civ5.

Another thing with civ 4 is that, unlike in civ 5, all of the AI will not hate you forever if you declear war on someone.
In fact, at least one early war is almost always necessary in case you want to have any chance of winning. An empire needs to have a large amount of land to pose any significant threat as a respectable world power, and unlike in civ 5 there is usually not enough room on the map for all of the empires to reach this status. Thus, the world usually ends up being divided into great powers and backwater nations, and you want to be in the former category.
Therefore, war will be necessary. This means when you get to that point around 100 or so, what you wanna do is build a bunch of military and use it and previously built military to attack your weakest nonfriendly neighbor.

That leads me into another big factor in civ4, diplomacy.
Unlike in civ5, where the AI will always try to win, you dont really know waht theyre thinking, and friendships dont really matter in the end, as they will eventually turn on you anyway, diplomacy is vitally important in civ4.
First of all, the AI in this game doesn't really try and win as much as it tries to roleplay as a certain world leader. Thus you have to know all the different AI in order to know how they will act and how you should treat them.
Overall though, you'll know alot more about what the AI think about you in this game than in civ5. In this game, you get a nice, organized, set in stone exact number on what all the AI think about you, and you even see why they do so, in the form of plusses and minuses showing what you have done to them, and what they think about it.
Also, friendships matter! Very rarely will someone who is friendly with you ever backstab you, and if someone is furious or annoyed with you, there is a very large chance they will try and attack you. Thus you wanna do your best to not become an outcast, pick your friends (preferably everyone), and keeping them on your side.
A very good way of picking your friends is by choosing religions. Religion in civ4 really doesn't matter much when it comes to domestic issues, such as the economy and such, but it really matters when it comes to foreign relations. The world typically ends up being divided into two or three blocks, each one sharing a common religion.
You always want to pick your religion depending on who you want your friends to be, and then spread that religion to all of your cities for the boosts to science and production that religion does provide. Even though you want your religion to be one that exists in most of your cities, having the right friends is far more important.
Getting open borders with everyone as quickly as possible is also good for bonus diplomacy points.

You always wanna keep an eye on your foreign advisor on f4, where the first screen shows which nations are at war, or allied and the like, and the second screen, the glance screen, shows you, in a nice table format, what all of the empires think about you and about eachother.
This and all of the advisor screens are extremely handy, and you really want to learn how to navigate through all of them, and especially the foreign advisor. Other important advisor screens to learn are in my opinion the civics screen, the research screen, and the demographics screen.

So about the military, yes, you want to have way more units than in civ5. I don't know the exact math here, its more of a feeling, but I'd say you want about 4 to 5 times as many units as you'd have in civ5. You also want a diverse army consisting of many different types of units, so that you can fight off both cavalry and infantry.

About military stratergy, you said your armies always keep losing, to let me give you some advice on how to avoid that.
First of all, before you attack, always keep an eye on the bottom left of your screen. If you select a unit and hold right click over an enemy unit as if you are going to attack it, you will see a square in the bottom left corner of the screen that shows the combat odds and all of the information about the units fighting. You want too look at this and usually make sure your odds of winning are as good as possible before choosing which unit to attack with.
You also want to keep in mind that usually, the defending unit will have a massive advantage, especially if theyre in a forest, hill, or city. Thus, you want to defend as often as possible, and attack as rarely as possible.
If you are defending a city, you want as many archery units as possible in it in the early game, and gunpowder units in the late game. Keep in mind, cavalry and siege units get no defense bonuses from fortifying.
If you are attacking an enemy stack, you NEED to use siege units. These cause collateral damage, which basically means they deal damage to all of the units in your opponents stack, which can be game breaking.
If you are attacking a city, you usually want to let your siege units bombard the city to 0%, then you want to let all your siege weapons attack first, and finally, you let all of your other units attack and capture the city.

As others have said, you want to have about 1 worker per city, and you want to build your early settlers as fast as possible. About the religious building, no, dont want to build them unless you are going for cultural victory, or if its a monestary or two in some of your science cities.

About the road thing, yes and no. Many have said you dont want roads everywhere, but you do want way more roads than in civ5. this is because, in order to get a resource, you need to build a road from the resource to one of your cities. Not only that, but roads dont cost upkeep, so there really isnt much reason not to build them. So yeah, build lots of roads!

Overall, I think the problem you are facing is with wars. You have to realize that the AI in this game will not hate you if you go to war with someone, and that, in fact, you will need to go to war to expand enough to stand a chance. Thus, in order to answer your biggest question, what you want to do in the turns after the 100 - 150 first turns, is pick a target, preferably one that is close to you and has a different religion, and attack them, taking their lands, scatering them, driving them before you, seeing their cities burned to ashes, and those who love them shrouded in tears, and to gather to your bosom their wives and daughters !!

TheLuigi said:

You also want to keep in mind that usually, the defending unit will have a massive advantage, especially if theyre in a forest, hill, or city. Thus, you want to defend as often as possible, and attack as rarely as possible.

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Careful, there. When severely outnumbered by the AI attacking first with your collateral damage-causing units is critically important.

TheLuigiBrother said:

About the road thing, yes and no. Many have said you dont want roads everywhere, but you do want way more roads than in civ5. this is because, in order to get a resource, you need to build a road from the resource to one of your cities. Not only that, but roads dont cost upkeep, so there really isnt much reason not to build them. So yeah, build lots of roads!

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In the early game, when worker turns are probably the most important resource you have, you do not want to be spending a lot of time building roads everywhere. Often you don't even need to hook up resources at this point in the game. Roads will be good for trade routes between cities, but it's generally more important to improve your resources than to build roads early.
Of course, after important tiles are improved, you do want to build lots of roads. Typically (unlike in Civ V) your whole empire will end up covered in roads - just not until your workers are done doing more important things.

In the early game, when worker turns are probably the most important resource you have, you do not want to be spending a lot of time building roads everywhere. Often you don't even need to hook up resources at this point in the game. Roads will be good for trade routes between cities, but it's generally more important to improve your resources than to build roads early.
Of course, after important tiles are improved, you do want to build lots of roads. Typically (unlike in Civ V) your whole empire will end up covered in roads - just not until your workers are done doing more important things.

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This has always been my biggest weakness. I'll build too many roads EARLY before it is really needed. Probably why I don't like to play Deity, since worker management is much more unforgiving.

rah said:

This has always been my biggest weakness. I'll build too many roads EARLY before it is really needed. Probably why I don't like to play Deity, since worker management is much more unforgiving.

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Yes, it's very easy to slip into very bad habits with workers if you aren't thinking clearly about what to do with them. And it's one of the most common problems newer players have. I think part of it is people simply not realizing how important worker turns are - I know I didn't think what my workers were doing was *that* big a deal until the good folks here told me so.

Lexicus said:

Yes, it's very easy to slip into very bad habits with workers if you aren't thinking clearly about what to do with them. And it's one of the most common problems newer players have. I think part of it is people simply not realizing how important worker turns are - I know I didn't think what my workers were doing was *that* big a deal until the good folks here told me so.

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Some people refine worker management to an extreme, and it really does make a difference. I don't go as far as many in this regard, but then I've never been willing to invest the time and energy needed to truly master this game at higher levels. If nothing else, you want to try to maximize the number of turns they're doing something useful, meaning you should try not to move them long distances if you can help it. On the other hand, you don't want to leave your distant cities working unimproved tiles; as in so many other aspects of Civ4 you have to find the right balance.

One technique I find very useful just for bookkeeping purposes is to use tile labels (Alt-S) to keep track of my worker actions. So for example, if on turn 100 I sent 2 workers to a tile to build a cottage, I'll label the tile with "100 cottage 2". If I save the game and come back tomorrow, I know when I look at the tile that a) I don't have to send any workers there because I already ordered them, and b) I don't have to think about what improvement I planned to build.

duckstab said:

One technique I find very useful just for bookkeeping purposes is to use tile labels (Alt-S) to keep track of my worker actions. So for example, if on turn 100 I sent 2 workers to a tile to build a cottage, I'll label the tile with "100 cottage 2". If I save the game and come back tomorrow, I know when I look at the tile that a) I don't have to send any workers there because I already ordered them, and b) I don't have to think about what improvement I planned to build.

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BUG/BULL/BAT shows you how many turns into any improvements have already been invested if you hover your cursor over a tile.

Skulbow said:

...
I think this game is a lot more unforgiving with mistakes than Civ V and BERT.

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Not at all, i would say it is quite the opposite, cIV has a far wider comeback threshold and flexibility of empire structure even within the same game than V. Nevertheless, one situation is things going wrong for a player who knows the game, and another, mistakes that will continue to be made due to a player with little experience in the game!