Good, succinct, all-in-one-place strategy guide?

I found this guide (http://www.carlsguides.com/strategy/civilization5/) to be very valuable in improving my Civ V play. Is there an equivalent guide for Civ IV/ its various expansions? I’m looking for something like that guides that tells you good strategies for play without either a) being mostly a rehashing of how the various game systems work (like this, http://www.alteredgamer.com/civiliz...zation-iv-choosing-the-civilization-overview/ which is as much a very detailed manual as anything) or b) being very spread out in a bunch of different articles written by a million different people, like the War Academy articles. Also looking to avoid articles that just list dozens and dozens of disjointed tips. Any recommendations?

Hello welcome,

I think this question is asked many times already.

As an introduction read http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/sisiutil.php

Next have BTS, install bug mod. Go to help (civilopedia) > strategy guides. Then you will have all the good stuff that you asked for. Topics range from empire management, civics, war, diplomacy/trading, espionage, sliders/beakers, civ specific strategy (mongols and romans), victory types like culture, demographics and more!

(Honestly http://www.alteredgamer.com/civiliz...zation-iv-choosing-the-civilization-overview/ does not provide anything useful at all )

The range of articles you've looked at already, as well as the war academy, probably all seem disjointed and unfocused because Civ 4 has so many different ways to play it. There is no one best strategy - it's a very unusual game in that respect. The best way to approach any single game depends hugely on the settings you choose, as well as the random map the map generator gives you.

And even on any random start there are usually different angles so that even the expert players will argue about which is best. Sometimes there will be more than one entirely different path leading to an equally strong win. Sometimes strategies that worked once and so a player wrote a strategy article on them never worked again, or only ever work on highly specific game settings! Take all strategy articles with a pinch of salt.

Recommendation: Play a few games and discover stuff for yourself - it's so much more fun that way ... Like life, if you could just read a single book on what to do, there'd be no point then going out and actually living it!

You can always come back ask specific questions here - people never mind answering stuff that's been answered before .

What Kid R said. Generally, once you learn optimal city placement, expansion rate, and diplomacy, you've got the ground mechanics and can go from there. As a rule of thumb, if you can play random leaders on fractal maps and win a large percentage of your games, you're ready to move up in difficulty.

I might say however there is also no shortage of ways to play Civ 5, but that has not prevented the emergence of coherent, unified strategy guides. Of course there are other successful ways to play than what is presented in the guide I linked to, but at least it's a one stop place to start.

Well I guess the war academy introductory section? There are only 3 or 4 general overviews there - that's not "all in one" but then a true historian would always want more than one source

But I still say just play the game to start with. I played it loads before I even knew CivFanatics existed and it was totally good fun

Anyway if you like Civ 5 you know basically how to play Civ. It's just different tile improvements and units, and the game drains your hard earned cash away on different stuff .

I'm providing this alternate link to pandamancer's earlier link to Sisiutil's Beginner's Guide:

Sis's

The above links to his thread in the Strategy Articles subforum (to this forum) and contains a more current version of the guide than the one in the War Academy.

Sis's guide is a fairly comprehensive beginner's guide that pretty much covers all major topics that a new player should be aware of. I think it is a very good place to start to get accustom to the game. There are other very good articles in the sub-forum that you can tackle later.

Civ IV is a very complex game. Much more so that Civ V. It will take time. However, following that guide should get you winning in due time on mid-levels like Noble, Prince and maybe Monarch. It should be noted that some of the tips/strategies covered in the guide don't necessarily translate to higher levels of the game which require more advanced concepts.

With all that said, and I do encourage you to read that guide, you can learn much about the game by spending time on this forum playing games with others and getting advice as you play. It's really the best place to learn. Let's Plays are also very helpful, if you watch the right ones.

I would also recommend that you play BTS and get the BUG mod or BAT mod.

I'd also advise that while it is good to learn about traits and stuff related to leaders/civs, I would focus less and that and more on the mechanics of the game. Ultimately you don't win this game because of leader traits and unique units, but rather how you master certain mechanics and strategies, especially in the early game. What do you build first in a city? When to start first settler? Trade routes? Importance of Workers and Granaries? Empire management and city specialization? What to build and not to build in cities? Great People generation and usage?

(note: there are a few good guides and general references in the War Academy. Many articles are a bit outdated. Ones related to some specific victory conditions are quite good, like Jesusin's culture guide. Later on, you might delve into guides related to Corporations)

Yeah, I've been playing some Civ V lately and it's a pretty good game now, but it's definitely not as complex as IV.

Well, I guess I'd say it is in better shape that at the start, but overall find the game is not very interesting. I do take stabs at the GOTMs over there now and then. It can be somewhat fun at the beginning just attaining some early goals with expansion/tech/wonders, but I never come close to finishing games. It just get's very meh once you finish the first war or two. The culture game is a mess unless you go for an early Sacred Sites victory, which is really only possible on levels below IMM. And..gawd..the diplo makes my eyes bleed.

Just to clarify, I've played the hell out of Civ IV. The HELL out of it. Like 200 hours worth (well, at least the hell out of it by non-civfanatics standards Anyway, I'm trying to improve my play, as opposed to learning how to play. I just used V as an example because it had the better guide. Despite all that time I still have difficulty on Prince (hence why I seek to improve!).

I too have found Civ V somewhat easier to master and a little less deep (though still excellent), so I've decided to go back to IV and give it another round.

Ok..well your experience with the game is new info. Although I'm sure there are plenty of new things you can glean from Sis's guide if you are still having trouble on Prince.

Other than some individual advanced guides to check out, and there are plenty of good ones, I can't think of a comprehensive advanced guide, nor do I think one is really possible/suitable for this game. Civ IV is just not simple enough for like Tabernak's Tradition guide. Honestly, I read Tabernak's Tradition guide and started breezing through Deity games on V. It's pretty much all you need to know with that game.

Sorry, there is just not too much reading you can do with this game to move up to higher levels.

Civ IV really is a game you need to "play" in order to learn. You are playing it. So to really learn it, play it here with us. Shadow/learner games are really the best way to learn. It's definitely my most recommended option.

Another option is Let's plays. I learned the most from AbsoluteZero's games:

AZ on YT

Lastly, spend some time over on the SGOTM forum as a lurker. Follow some of the games there like Plastic Ducks, The Shawshank Redemption or Phoenix Rising (best team in history of gaming ), and look at how they analyze and micro. You will learn gobs. There's a current game in process.

Interesting, thanks! Hadn't thought of watching other people's games, but I guess like chess the game is certainly complex enough to study how great players play.

Always research Mysticism / Meditation / Polytheism / Masonry / Monotheism / Theology first!

No, actually don't do that.

I think there has been some change in strategy since 2011, when that old strategy guide was written (at least, as far as I can remember old strategy discussions). Building wealth is more popular now, and I think there is also a bit more focus on building cottage helper cities for your capital.

CaptainKoloth said:

Just to clarify, I've played the hell out of Civ IV. The HELL out of it. Like 200 hours worth (well, at least the hell out of it by non-civfanatics standards Anyway, I'm trying to improve my play, as opposed to learning how to play. I just used V as an example because it had the better guide. Despite all that time I still have difficulty on Prince (hence why I seek to improve!).

I too have found Civ V somewhat easier to master and a little less deep (though still excellent), so I've decided to go back to IV and give it another round.

Click to expand...

Found this interesting. Just wanted to mention, 200h are really not much by Civfanatics-standards. I've sometimes burned 200h on a single game (like when I played Huge / Marathon for Highscore) , and my usual games last between 40 and 80h, so 200h would relate to 3-5 games.
I'm short before finishing the "Deity Elite Quattromaster" challenge though, and that one implies that one has played CIV with every single Civ, on every map, for every victory condition, on all speeds, with all later era starts and at least 2 Gauntlets, so at least 40 games.

CIV is really a so amazing game, that I came back 2 times already to continue on playing it, so I left games that were a lot newer and looked a lot better. I play it for about 3-4y already, I "studied" it, and there are still things I learn about it today, like this week, when Sampsa made me aware of the Granary actually working different from what I've thought, that's a base-mechanic which I didn't understand fully!

I know that I'm not alone with that experience and that others can top it, like they played CIV for 8-10y and they're still learning.

ha..I noted Sampsa's granary calc thing myself and have been playing around with it. Getting that dern granary growth optimization right is probably one of the bigger obstacles/mysteries over the years. I've seen whole thread discussions on it before with no real consensus. Getting it down though can be such a huge boost to the game, and most of the uber-players generally know how to make it work unlike the uber-suck players like myself.

It's actually very simple limone ^^

You simply multiply the Food-excess of a city with the turns that a city needs to grow. If that is > than half of the Food-bar, everythings ok. If it's < , then you should lower the food before the Granary finishes.

If you wanna be perfect, you also take into account, that a city needs a certain number of Food to grow, so what you should have in mind is, that you don't want the city to grow 1T later because you cut the Food.

@ Lymy and Sera ^

Regards to the granary, my math sucks so I keep it simple.

- Complete the Granary immediately or as soon as possible after growing a population. The same holds true when at size 1, although in this case you'll be looking at 2 Math chops (1 for EXP). Ever notice situations where you finished your Granary and grew a population point but your food bin is not half full? Why does this happen?

The Granary begins storing food AFTER it's completed. If you complete the Granary at 20F/24F at size 2 then when you grow to size 3 you've stored basically nothing. On the flip side, if you finish the Granary at 4F/24F then you begin storing food from that point on.

To chime in on the granary discussion:

What cseanny says is right. By extension, the optimal time to complete it is when the food bar is one short of half full (by complete I mean on the turn it's finished and you start another build). That way it stores half the food bar + 1 food, which is exactly half the amount the city will need to grow next time. Things change if you whip it: you'll need half the food bar -1 food for the city's new size the turn after whipping.

Examples:

Build the granary at size 3 w/o whipping. The turn the granary is completed, you should have 12 food stored (26/2-1). That means the granary will store 14 food before growing to size 4 and upon doing so the granary will be half full (14/28).

Build a granary whipping from size 4 to size 2. The turn after whipping the food bar should have 11 food (24/2-1). The granary will then store 13 food when growing to size 3 and be half full after growth (13/26).

Please correct me if I'm wrong

All food surplus on the final turn before growth is counted towards the granary bin though. For example, a S2 city can collect a maximum of 12F in the granary. If this city has a food surplus of +6 than the granary can be completed as late as 17/24F and still collect the full 12F.

In some cases you can even use "avoid growth" to gain another turn to collect food in the granary. Take the above example but assume the granary finishes when the city is at 18/24F. If you let the city grow normally than your granary will only collect 6F. However, if you use avoid growth the city will stay at 24/24F for one turn without growing, and on the following turn when the city is allowed to grow the granary will provide the full 12F. Of course the one drawback to this is that you lose 1T of an extra tile, but if that tile is pretty weak than the 6F is almost certainly more valuable.

I like granary math, but I'm probably just weird.