Post Short Tips/Tricks Here

#1: save your game at the start, and then you can explore as usual. If you get beat to a village or make a dumb mistake early on...you can start over with the benefit of hindsight!

#2: I will make three warriors to start; the 1st for battling barbarians, the 2nd for exploring and finding barbarians (leave the fights to #1), and the 3rd to protect my capital. After exploring, bring everyone back and form a great army.

#3: If you find a wonder, considering posting someone next instead of "capturing" it (or whatever the term may be). For example, the El Dorado wonder produces more gold later in the game, and the Arc of the Covenant is more productive if you have more than one or two cities.

#4: When another civ demands a great person always say NO! Typically within a few turns you can diplomatically suggest peace and they will usually accept a technology rather than the great person (which cannot be replaced).

#5: Playing at the chieftan level provides many insights! You can try new strategies, learn a civ's special characteristics, and better understand the tech tree (and the bonuses granted to the 1st to learn a tech!).
 
couple things I noticed this weekend:

#6: End game wars: When other civ's recognize you are winning and start declaring war, immediately ask to talk to the warring civ's leader. Often the AI is automatically triggering a war, even if you have good relations. Occasionally that civ will back off immediately, even right after declaring war.

#7: Tech jumping: 50% of the required techs for a future tech must be completed, but additionally the tech jump must be within 10 turns (I think its ten). Sometimes, in order for a tech to even show up as an option you must adapt your cities' production to science. For example, I was playing as Americans and wanted to build factories for the triple production bonus but I was a ways off from the tech. All I had to do was change my gold production city to science and told my science city to focus on science (rather than being balanced for growth), and the option to study industrialization came up after a turn. I quickly cranked out factories relatively early in the game and snatched up most of the modern wonders!

#8: Sometimes an exploring unit will get trapped due to the growing culture of a civ that blocks a chokepoint. Rather than disbanding the unit for gold, consider placing it on top of a special resource. I had a great game in which I received the Great Wall from Angkor Wat. After receiving a horseman for defeating a barbarian village and realizing both my warrior and horseman were trapped, I placed them on important resources on the peninsula. The enemy civ couldn't declare war, and had to focus its efforts on getting engineering just to be able to expand (but of course, without these resources the civ was severely crippled).
 
#7: Tech jumping: 50% of the required techs for a future tech must be completed, but additionally the tech jump must be within 10 turns (I think its ten). Sometimes, in order for a tech to even show up as an option you must adapt your cities' production to science. For example, I was playing as Americans and wanted to build factories for the triple production bonus but I was a ways off from the tech. All I had to do was change my gold production city to science and told my science city to focus on science (rather than being balanced for growth), and the option to study industrialization came up after a turn. I quickly cranked out factories relatively early in the game and snatched up most of the modern wonders!

In my experience researching a tech you don't already have the pre-reqs for is a bad decision, because it costs more beakers to research than it otherwise would - and I think the extra "tax" is the same as the number of beakers of the pre-req.

So if you can do, like, Masonry in 2 turns and Mathematics in 5, then it's pretty much always a smarter idea to do Masonry, because once you're done Mathematics will only take 3 turns, and at the end of the 5 turns you have two techs instead of one.
 
In my experience researching a tech you don't already have the pre-reqs for is a bad decision, because it costs more beakers to research than it otherwise would - and I think the extra "tax" is the same as the number of beakers of the pre-req.

That won't be the case if:

- You skip prereqs of prereqs (thus saving even more beakers).
- This helps you reach the first-to-discover bonus.
- You manage to later backfill the techs you jumped.
- It is a necessary or extremely helpful tech at the moment.

The extra tax is less than the missing prereq cost. 10 less I think. At the moment, since you are skipping prereqs of prereqs, the prereq might not even be available to you...
 
In my experience researching a tech you don't already have the pre-reqs for is a bad decision, because it costs more beakers to research than it otherwise would - and I think the extra "tax" is the same as the number of beakers of the pre-req.

So if you can do, like, Masonry in 2 turns and Mathematics in 5, then it's pretty much always a smarter idea to do Masonry, because once you're done Mathematics will only take 3 turns, and at the end of the 5 turns you have two techs instead of one.

Not always true. I've seen where the future tech was 6 turns away and the prereq was 4 turns. By your theory, if I complete the prereq first, the future tech would take only 2 turns to complete. Wrong, it took another 4 turns. So I ended up getting the future tech 2 turns later than if I just jumped.
 
- This helps you reach the first-to-discover bonus.
- You manage to later backfill the techs you jumped.
- It is a necessary or extremely helpful tech at the moment.

The first thing you mentioned (skipping prereqs of prereqs) is a good point, but the three above can all be responded to with "...but getting the earlier tech + future tech in succession will often take the exact same amount of turns as getting the future tech by itself." i.e., you gain absolutely nothing by skipping the prereq.

The extra tax is less than the missing prereq cost. 10 less I think.

Yes, so earlier on in the game the 10 beakers might save you a turn or two (which may be what Chinese American was referring to), but by the time your empire is pumping out 50+ beakers per turn the 10 beakers becomes irrelevant and you're effectively still charged two techs' worth of beakers to research one, when you could just use the same # of beakers to research both.
 
same total beakers doesn't necessarily equate to same research time. I'll use the example used in the strategy article on tech tree.

Code:
Univerity - 240 beakers
Democracy - 120
{Inflated Cost} = 240 + 120 - 10 = 350 beakers

Assume you get 50 beakers a turn.
No jumping Democracy to get University, it will take you 120/50 = 3 and 240/50 = 5, = 8 turns to get Uni.

Jumping Demo to get Uni will take 350/50 = 7 turns.

We see from this example, jumping lets you get the tech one turn earlier. Beakers don't carry over, but give you gold instead. (I guess they learned from Civ IV.) So it depends on if you think that extra turn will cost you the tech's bonus (in this case, a free pikeman or a +1 science in all cities.) In short, you really need to bust out the calculator if you want to micromanage to this degree.
 
For PS3 (unsure if it's like this on the 360): You can use both sticks to move around the map faster - about twice the speed of normal stick movement speed.

You can cycle through your cities to find a specific unit in a stack you want to utilize.
 
Use spy rings (a spy army) to knock out a single enemy spy, and then choose "leave quietly". Follow up with a single spy to do her dirty work, saving the spy ring for another battle.

Use a spy to destroy troublesome enemy walls. (The AI builds walls in cities threatened by a culture flip.) Unfortunately, you don't have any control over which building the spy will destroy, so this might take more than one attempt.

Spies and caravans can collect friendly huts, and with their multiple moves can make good explorers if you get them from a barbarian village in the early game.

Initiate diplomacy as soon as you meet a rival AI. The location of their capital will be revealed on your map.

The free militia you get with galleys and galleons are useful even after the world has been explored. They have the "scout" ability, which reveals defender strength before you attack. Stack one with your modern army or supporting fleet, and use your upgrades for something better.

Dedicate at least one city to Science. Make sure it has lots of trade and is set to produce beakers. Build a library and university (but don't bother with a market or bank, which will be useless). Settle a Great Scientist.

Dedicate at least one city to Gold. Make sure it has lots of trade and is set to produce gold. Build a market and bank (but don't bother with a library or university, which will be useless). Settle a Great Explorer.

Sites with many sea squares make for a excellent specialized Gold or Science cities. Build The Colossus or the Trade Fair of Troyes in your specialized cities. The East India Company is even better, as it works with ALL your cities. If they city has low production don't worry -- rush!
 
That's new to me. :) So even if the settler unit has used its turn, as long as you have a unit on the same tile, you can make the settler form a city this way?
on the ds version you dont even need other units on the same tile

you just select the unit with the stylus and you can settle it

great for russian starts as you can move two spaces to get two resources in your courthouse range and still build the city on your first turn
 
Sorry if this one has been mentioned before:

Late game use of spies:

If you would like to infiltrate a city that may have a ring of spies guarding it (seems fairly rare on SP, but has happened to me several times), group a solo fourth spy with your spy ring- Use the spy ring to defeat the defending spies, then quietly leave the city. Send in the solo spy for your intended purpose- This way you accomplish the same outcome but only use up the solo spy, leaving the ring free to infilitrate another city, accomplish another goal at in the same city, or return to defend one of your own cities against AI spies.
 
Often, a decision NOT to build certain buildings will make or break your strategy. At high difficulty levels you will need lots of armies to be able to defend yourself effectively, so being efficient with buildings is extremely important.

Remember that a single veteran unit is enough to make a veteran army. For this reason, you rarely need more than one barracks for each major landmass in your empire.

If your city has two or fewer desert tiles, don't bother building a Trading Post. I generally consider the hammer from a tradesman more valuable than the trade from desert tiles. Egypt is an exception, of course.

Temples are a low priority early on. However, they are quite valuable in large cities.

Courthouses are nice, but not always necessary. Often, your tradesmen are more valuable than your workable city tiles. Build courthouses to capture outer ring resources or upgradable tiles like hills or plains, but don't bother if all you are getting is forest, grassland, or sea. Usually, only the first four tiles from the outer ring worth working (enough to grow your city to 12), and after that tradesmen take over (at 1 Hammer / 2+ Trade each).

Build walls only in cities that are close to enemy palaces. Keep enough gold on hand to rush a wall if you are threatened with an invasion or culture flip. Beware a neighboring civ that switches to Monarchy!

Typical build order for a city: Granary, Workshop, Library (or marketplace or barracks), Harbor (or Courthouse), Temple, then advanced buildings. All of these buildings are valuable enough to rush with gold if you can afford it. If your city has an abnormally high number of upgradeable tiles of a specific type, this may influence your build order. For example, if you have 3 hills, rush your workshop first.
 
Hi, Im new here!

Just thought I'd ask a quick question about building up my military. Can an army (formed by 3 units) be expanded any further?
 
Hi, Im new here!

Just thought I'd ask a quick question about building up my military. Can an army (formed by 3 units) be expanded any further?
Nope. Once you have an army, the only way to improve it is to win battles.

However, the effectiveness of an army can be improved with naval support, spies, the Himeji Samurai Castle, and Fundamentalism government.
 
One thing you can do with armies which is easy to miss is get 6 upgrades. Before someone tells me I'm talking toot, I'll explain. Starting with a standard (non-vet) army, or a vet army, you can obtain 3 elite upgrades, e.g. blitz, march and guerilla. However, if you can get 3 units each with at least 2 unique upgrades, they all stack. For example, if you were to create a legion army from the following:
Legion 1 - Blitz + Medic
Legion 2 - Infiltration + March
Legion 3 - Guerilla + Scout
then the army would have all 6 upgrades. It can be tricky to get 3 individual units with 2 unique upgrades each, since your upgrade choice is sometimes limited, but when you do the resulting army is incredibly versatile. Any combination of upgrades works, e.g. 0+0+6, 3+2+1, 4+1+1
 
I've started playing CIV4 recently and I am struggling quite a lot! I've read some on these forums and I've seen a lot about science city's, production city's and super science city's. I want to understand what they do and how you build them up.
 
I've started playing CIV4 recently and I am struggling quite a lot! I've read some on these forums and I've seen a lot about science city's, production city's and super science city's. I want to understand what they do and how you build them up.

Those strategies are relating to Civ Rev and not to Civ4. Post your question in the Civ 4 forum and you will get more reasonable answers. Although many of us active in this forum is both Civ Rev and Civ4 players, including me but I´m by principle not discussing Civ4 in this forum.
 
Hi. I recently picked this up, and I'm no expert but I've collected a number of tips that the next beginner might find useful. Many of them have been listed already. Apologies for it being obvious ones to exp players:

- Pick nice surroundings when founding city, but don’t wander too long
- Explore area for nice spots for huts & relics
- Don't settle city on useful tile. Settling tile becomes useless (becomes normal city tile)
- Use hills to attack from and forrest for defence. Protect hills next to city (excellent attacking position for opponents)
- Note that battling across a river adds to defense of opponent (attack weakens)
- Note that attacking from Naval unit weakens your attack
- Don't leave cities idling. All cities should always produce (hammers/science/gold/trade)
- Expand – get more cities, and grow all cities (look for nice spots in exposed area nearby. Build border/choke cities with heavy defense
- Grow culture – easy way to get cities (culture flip)
- Combine strong attack with strong defensive units and move them together
- Remember "Form Army" option
- Attack with multiple units (pref. armies) to take city
- Find choke points and exploit them
- Don't just build roads because you can. Ops/AI will also use them. If you do build roads, block them with a defensive unit in the middle. Do the same on Op's roads
- Use Spies (e.g. to steal GPs.) First send ring of spies, leave quietly, then send single spy
- Group of Caravans adds more to your gold but keeps other civ's tax the same
- Democracy is good for “Defend and Develop” approach
- Constantly check on Gold vs Science and switch some cities to your benefit when needed (a city can only do one of them, not both at the same time)
- Use ships for Naval support in battles to boost your chances
- Don't use GP immediately – wait first, and check options/progress. Also look at other city to settle GP in
- Consider option for Great Scientist to rush tech, but wait first to check progress. Use appropriately
- Consider option for Great Builder to rush Wonders. Wait first, start a wonder, then use super power
- Consider option for Great Thinker to flip cities
- Check advantages of Civ you are using (like techs during eras)
- Get Nuke first and either fire it or defend that city heavily (Manhattan Project). There is only one. A capitol can't be destroyed, but perfect to sack after nuke.
- Use Diplomacy to gather intelligence
- Militia can be used as scout in attacking force after exploration (put in same stack as armies)
- Check aircarft units for low fuel warning

Use it, don't use it. These are not hard & fast rules, just advice.
 
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