Condensed tips for beginners?

I am pretty new at the game, but am addicted. However, I am finding that even very late in the game, some of my cottages still "need to be worked to become hamlet/village/town." Since I am unsure how to actually do that (the other cottages grew nicely!) I am at a loss. Also, sometimes I have a nice town and am at a loss for things for my workers to work on, so when I hit automate, they start to tear down the town to put up a farm when the never-growing cottage is untouched. I just don't get it.....
How do I get the cottage to grow? Secondly, is it really that big a deal to stop the workers from turning my town into a farm....I usually have tons of other farms nearby....or at least a windmill.....thank you in advance for your help.
 
So then how do I "work" the cottages to get them to grow? They have been cottages since I was in Medieval Times and now it's the Modern Era....everything else is built up around them....
 
cairnsy44 said:
So then how do I "work" the cottages to get them to grow? They have been cottages since I was in Medieval Times and now it's the Modern Era....everything else is built up around them....

You must assign a citizen to the cottage. Open the city view window and click on the cottage. A white circle will be placed around it to indicate a citizen is now working it. Of course, it will also result in another white circle disappearing because that citizen was working on something else at the time.

I've started "training" my cottages -- work them until they grow to a hamlet, then switch to another and keep switching until they are all towns. That way when your population increases, your new citizens will have towns waiting for them already.
 
@Scottkimbal

Not really sure what you're looking for here. There's tonnes of information on religion here on the forums, as well as in the manual and in the pedia.

Religion has multiple effects: dimplomacy, tech rate, commerce/gold, production rate, and happiness, to name a few. A whole branch of the Civics are about religion.

Can you make your question more specific?
 
I really need some help at the moment with civ IV.
Im a 10 year old boy called sammy salem.
I'd be really grateful if you could help me:)
 
Sammy, there are lots of ways to win at Civ4. The most important thing to remember, though, is to have fun.

My suggestion (there are no perfect answers in Civ4) is to start off by turning on your city automation and automate your workers. Then, build lots and lots of war units. You'll need them if you want to attack the enemy Civs. And they'll keep your enemies from attacking you if you chose not to attack them.

What are you having the most trouble with now?
 
Scottkimbal said:
But what benefit does having a religion do for your civilization?


religon is huge, very huge in this game. When you build the holy wonder, you get +1 gp per city with your mother religion. This doesnt sound like much but it can add up to major cash. Also AI will love you if you both have the same religion. Religion is a huge change from the old games...
 
Religion can be very useful, but it isn't fundamental. Founding your religion will give you a holy city and afterwards some gold, but it can also quickly turn civs against you, as they consider you have fallen to a "heathen religion". In the first part of a game the AI's attitude towards you can be totally dictated by religion. Most of the time I don't bother to found my own religion, I prefer researching military techs than writing/alphabet, and I trade for the religious techs. I wait for one of my cities to convert to one faith or another, and, if the civ which "controls" that faith isn't to powerful or too near me, I'll convert to that religion. That's the best way of initiating a long-term friendship, which is the key to successful diplomacy and can really save your day on higher difficulty levels.
So, although religion has its uses, it's often better to let the faith come to you from outside, and not hurry along to research those techs. Of course, if you're starting with mysticism, why not...
 
I am also new at Civ IV.. I also have a quick question.. I'm used to playing Civ III and on that you can decided how many people you play against and in Civ IV i havn't not figured out excatally how to do that??? I only like playing against 1 other civialization to begin with.. till I figure out the game more!!!
 
CoolCat04 said:
I am also new at Civ IV.. I also have a quick question.. I'm used to playing Civ III and on that you can decided how many people you play against and in Civ IV i havn't not figured out excatally how to do that??? I only like playing against 1 other civialization to begin with.. till I figure out the game more!!!

Choose Custom Game, in the Menu at the top it has the AI opponents (and you)
 
My $.05 worth:

#1 You must become more aggressive as you move up in difficulty levels. For warmongers this is obvious but I've always been a builder at heart. Even now that I know better, I am sometimes tempted to have a “moral” foreign policy (e.g. “I won't fight you, Monty, unless you fight me!”) and just build temples everywhere. I still sometimes feel a pang of regret when I invade the “nice” leader next-door (Gandhi, MM, Hatti) for no reason other than brute strategic realism. But on Noble and below you can build everything you want and win without going to war at all -- on Prince and Monarch, you have to take out an early enemy (pre-1000 BC) to have a chance in the later game. It seems like you always start next to horses, ivory, iron or bronze; so beeline to a tech that will give you good early troops using whatever strategic resource is nearby and, before you found your fourth city, chop-rush 5 or 6 of your best units to attack the poor schmuck next-door who only has archers. Don't be moral: kill, kill, kill! Think W. Bush not Warren Harding.

#2 You don't need EVERY building in EVERY city. If the people are happy, you don't need a coliseum. If the people are healthy, you don't need recycling. If the city is deep in the center of your empire, you don't need walls/castles. If the city is surrounded by hills/plains, you don't need a bank or university. Always ask yourself “why am I building that?” If the answer is “nothing better to build,” you should be making troops, not another temple! (Pre-emptive building is fine so if your answer is “I just planted a bunch of farms and I expect this city to grow rapidly,” then you can build pre-emptive temples/aqueduct, etc. as needed) The point is that three temples in each less-than-pop-12 city aren't going to help you when the Praetorians/Cossacks/Samurai come looking for donations, but a few extra axes/maces/bows will! Having extra troops instead of extra temples will also help you be more aggressive (see #1). Needless to say this also applies to wonders -- you don't need to build any wonders at all to win and too many will hurt you because your army will be too small.

#3 Specialize. Have at least one city (preferably surrounded by plains/hills) that just builds troops THE WHOLE GAME. Only stop making troops to build the few buildings needed to keep that city happy/healthy and build more-better-faster-troops (barracks/forge/factory/heroic epic/etc.). Any cities surrounded by grasslands/floodplains/seas/oceans will be your commerce cities. Build villages on the grasslands/floodplains and science/commerce buildings in these cities. These cities will make money and research while your troop city (cities) crank out soldiers. Make one great person city, put lots of farms around it to get the population big enough to have lots of specialists (and great person points) and mines so that you can build wonders in that city to get more great person points. The game is ultimately one of clock management since every Civ has the same number of turns. Your job is to get the most out of those turns as possible. One way to do this is specialization. When you specialize, you save time because you don't have to build every building in every city (see #2). The time you save is the difference between having large standing army ready to attack/defend and being caught with your pants down when your neighbor launches a sneak attack right after you complete your 9th university in a town that only generates 5 commerce!
 
cuervojones said:
#2 You don't need EVERY building in EVERY city. If the people are happy, you don't need a coliseum. If the people are healthy, you don't need recycling. If the city is deep in the center of your empire, you don't need walls/castles. If the city is surrounded by hills/plains, you don't need a bank or university. Always ask yourself “why am I building that?” If the answer is “nothing better to build,” you should be making troops, not another temple! (Pre-emptive building is fine so if your answer is “I just planted a bunch of farms and I expect this city to grow rapidly,” then you can build pre-emptive temples/aqueduct, etc. as needed) The point is that three temples in each less-than-pop-12 city aren't going to help you when the Praetorians/Cossacks/Samurai come looking for donations, but a few extra axes/maces/bows will! Having extra troops instead of extra temples will also help you be more aggressive (see #1). Needless to say this also applies to wonders -- you don't need to build any wonders at all to win and too many will hurt you because your army will be too small.

now one question here. what do you do if you running low in gold, and one adittional unit will cost you one gold? anything else you can do besides building "useless" stuff?
 
autocon said:
now one question here. what do you do if you running low in gold, and one adittional unit will cost you one gold? anything else you can do besides building "useless" stuff?

Well, you can always build wealth, culture or research.
Or, if you have extra food/unworked commerce tiles, then perhaps another specialist or two, or move some citizens around to reduce number of hammers?
 
Its hard to stay focused in a game. Even in cities designed to produce military units you find the urge to build wonders or other buildings when playing prince. I tend to find commerce/ GP cities lack production to secure a wonder in under 30 turns without chopping every forest in sight.

I founded a religion playing Romans and found the other 3 civs had converted to another religion on my island. Made trading impossible even with a beeline to Alphabet.

Would it of been better just to adopt the other religion? (If they would of let me grrrrr) To be fair i had closed my borders to protect empty land for later city building and to cut off the sandwiched Greeks. Although i did manage to spread the religion to 8 of my cities.

Luckily another civ declared war on the greeks and i was happy to oblige in helping even if they didnt ask removing 2 of the weaker Greek cities and the other civ (I forget there name) became much willing to exchange technology and trade after that.

Im struggling a bit on GP city appraoch. I tend to be scared to take workers off food to use as scientists to get the +3gp points. Whats the right balance here?

Anyone got a sort of time scale for city production. I normally aim for 3 cities by 2000bc. perhaps 5-6 by AD trying to maintain 70-80% science?

ttfn

Gum
(prince 7 civs normal speed)
 
autocon said:
what do you do if you running low in gold, and one adittional unit will cost you one gold? anything else you can do besides building "useless" stuff?

If you're that short of gold and your research is already at 0%, you're expanding too fast. Build some commerce improvements (cottages) or maintenance reducing buildings (courthouses or Forbidden City). In a surprisingly short period of time, your gold total will increase. Now, build more military and go kill something.

Otherwise, turn down your research rate, build more military and go kill something.
 
How do you maintain good diplomacy with AI when they use free religion?

Btw I don't have much military so military struggle won't work.
 
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