Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners

I am unable to open up your guide. I am not sure why but a blank screen comes up.

It's an Adobe file - so either make sure you are using Abode to open it - or you may have to upgrade with the recent patch in order to utilize it. If it still doesn't open - but you know the entire file is there - save it to your computer under a readable file formate and open it by another program.

If that doesn't work - throw your computer out the window and run around the block screaming 6 times and see what happens...
 
I downloaded Sisiutil's guide yesterday, and had my most successful game of Civ ever last night - breakthrough!
thanks. :)
 
I downloaded Sisiutil's guide yesterday, and had my most successful game of Civ ever last night - breakthrough!
thanks. :)
You're welcome!

If I was selling this thing, your comment would be the perfect recommendation blurb to quote on the cover. :lol:
 
I have been looking for a beginner's guide, and this just fits the bill. Thanks Sisiutil! Well done!
 
I found this guide so useful, I had to sign up for the forums to post my appreciation.

Thanks for making this very well-written and informative guide. Hopefully, I can optimize my game a little now. :)
 
Your Basic guide is excellent and works/applies equally to my Macintosh-Warlords version of the game.

Thank you so much for putting all that time and effort in. I certainly appreciate it.
 
Your Basic guide is excellent and works/applies equally to my Macintosh-Warlords version of the game.

Thank you so much for putting all that time and effort in. I certainly appreciate it.
Thanks! Glad to hear you found it useful.
 
Another great guide. I learned a few more things from it. Seriously, you should be working for a gaming magazine or something.
 
Thanks! Glad to hear you found it useful.
I'll have to add my voice to the chorus of thanks here. Maybe we should have a "We love the Sisiutil Day". ;)

As I said in my intro post, I've only recently started playing Civ 4 as my previous laptop couldn't handle the graphics. I was a bit disheartened that I was struggling to make the jump from Chieftain to Warlord level (I had no trouble playing at Deity level in Civ 2, never really got into Civ 3).

Your guide was brilliant, it showed me exactly where I was going wrong. One of my main problems was believing the manual's blurb about the AI being much better at handling the micromanagement than it used to be, so that players can concentrate on the gameplay. This is sadly untrue and it seems that micromanagement is as important as it ever was - automating the workers was a big part of where I was going wrong.

My other mistake was playing Civ 4 with the strategy of Civ 2 (hardly a good idea when there's no Leonardo's Workshop for starters!)

Anyway, thanks to your guide, I've already had Modern Armour in the 18th century without even trying that hard. Nice work. :)
 
"Your state religion in a city produces one culture point, 5 if it is a “holy city” where the religion was founded. Under the Free Religion civic, all religions in a city produce one culture point."

Correction; each religion in a city gives 1 culture, 5 if it is a holy city. Setting a state religion will remove the benefit from all other religions. Thus; you can achieve the same culture effect as Free Religion by not setting a state religion.

Otherwise, a very solid and helpful work :)
 
I know guides don't get stickied, but I strongly believe this one should be; even if it is the only sticked guide there is. Don't forget to update it when BtS is out.

=$= Big J Money =$=
 
I know guides don't get stickied, but I strongly believe this one should be; even if it is the only sticked guide there is. Don't forget to update it when BtS is out.

=$= Big J Money =$=

I'll have to play a few games with BtS first, including a few ALC games to get tips from the group mind. Then I'll update the guide, ensuring that BtS tips are identified clearly. This is much the same approach I took with Warlords.
 
Thanks for the great guide Sisiutil, it's helping me a lot!

I'm still kind of clueless about the game though, I played some civ 1 but I felt the game moved way too fast for me and I just couldn't keep expanding and staying alive at the same time.

I can figure out the first couple of turns, get a very small civ going, but I have no idea how to turn that into a nation capable of paced advancement and eventually war.

You mention in your guide having specialized cities, when is it worth actually having these? Early on or not until you have several other flourishing cities?

As a beginner, what kind of goals do I need to set for myself? I'm really missing a campaign mode in this game with short missions. That teach me how to effectively handle myself in a diverse amount of situations and prepare me for free play.
I can't tell if I'm doing good or bad in this game until the end, which takes a very long time to get to, and when I get there I don't know what I could have done better.
What kind of empire should I try to aim for within the first 100 turns of the game? I need to at least do decently at that before I can continue the game, but I have no idea what's considered "decent".
 
Thanks for the great guide Sisiutil, it's helping me a lot!

I'm still kind of clueless about the game though, I played some civ 1 but I felt the game moved way too fast for me and I just couldn't keep expanding and staying alive at the same time.

I can figure out the first couple of turns, get a very small civ going, but I have no idea how to turn that into a nation capable of paced advancement and eventually war.

You mention in your guide having specialized cities, when is it worth actually having these? Early on or not until you have several other flourishing cities?

As a beginner, what kind of goals do I need to set for myself? I'm really missing a campaign mode in this game with short missions. That teach me how to effectively handle myself in a diverse amount of situations and prepare me for free play.
I can't tell if I'm doing good or bad in this game until the end, which takes a very long time to get to, and when I get there I don't know what I could have done better.
What kind of empire should I try to aim for within the first 100 turns of the game? I need to at least do decently at that before I can continue the game, but I have no idea what's considered "decent".
The specialization of a city is something most players have in mind when the city is founded, based upon surrounding terrain and resources.

For example, a city with several food sources will probably best serve as a Great Person Farm; a city with lots of riverside grassland tiles can be a commerce city; a city with several hills will likely be a production city (provided it has enough food to feed the population).

You can shift specialization in some cases by changing the tile improvements. For example, you can make a city surrounded by grassland riverside tiles into a heckuva production city by way of workshops and watermills. But most of the time, you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.

In the early part of the game, your cities won't be specialized. You'll be focused on initial growth, expansion, and survival. But you can lay the groundwork for later specialization through prioritizing certain tile improvements and builds.

You might find it helpful to look at some of the ALC games (link in my sig) which walk through matches played as certain leaders. You can download the saved game files at various stages of the game to see where things stand in each era.
 
Thanks!

My main problem is being so used to RTSs like starcraft, C&C, warcraft, and even a little Rise of Nations, where you actually establish a big empire very early and quickly and do a lot of fighting at the same time.

I can't get past the mindset that 1AD is not 2/3rd of the game, in most RTS I would have my infrastructure and a huge army set up long before the usual 2/3rd of the game, since I didn't have the same going for me in this game I naturally assumed I really sucked at it. Because I always find myself with only a couple of cities, technologies, and a very small army around 1AD.

However, looking at the succession games, Sullla's walkthrough, and your ALC games made me realize I wasn't doing anywhere near as badly at this game as I thought(but I still have a loooooong way to go) :)
 
Yeah, I remember seeing a post from another RTS gamer here a while back who said it took him several games before he realized he could actually slow down, take his time, and think about what he was doing. :lol:

The early game in Civ IV is probably the most challenging part, and, in the view of many, the part where it's the most fun. You have several different goals you can achieve at that part of the game, but they're all difficult to accomplish and there's no way (unless you bump yourself down to Settler level after playing on Monarch or higher) that you can achieve all of them, so you have to make choices and you're bound to be stymied in some regards as well. In addition, the game is much more unpredictable at that stage--barbarians are still numerous, the AI leaders are still forming their opinions about you, and you don't even know what the rest of the map looks like.

I've had several off-line games that I've abandoned around the industrial/modern eras because by that point the game is often a foregone conclusion.
 
Thank you very much for the guide Sisiutil.

I have a question about initial build orders. You seem to prefer Worker/Warrior/Settler. Hoever, the "Optimum Early Growth Strategy" by ohioastronomy favors Worker/Worker/Settler, and his arguments are quite good. Also I generally play without Barbarians.

What do you think about the Worker/Worker/Setter build order ?
 
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