Yet another set of tips for new or struggling players.

1. Play the map first. Play your traits second. Yes, it makes sense to try to take advantage of the traits, UB, and UU your leader has (e.g. running lots of specialists if Philosophical, Chariot rush if Egyptian, or building wonders if Industrious). However, it makes no sense to go after Stonehenge, Great Wall and Pyramids if Shaka starts 8 tiles from your capital (even if you’re Industrious with Stone), and a Chariot-rush against an AI more than 20 tiles away will wind up costing you a fortune in maintenance, even if you manage to pull it off.

2. Land is power. Having more land (and cities) than the AIs means you will out-produce them even if you manage the land and cities badly. Ability to out-produce can cover for bad play in other areas, which is why the AIs get production bonuses at higher levels. Your life will be much easier if you settle, or capture, a lot of productive land in the first 4 millennia.

3. Productive land is land with food. Learn to count food tiles (grassland is neutral at 2 food; everything else - desert, hills, plains - is less than that and needs to be offset with either a farm or a food special), and avoid settling areas with lots of brown tiles (plains) and no food sources.

4. In the early game, don’t do half measures. You can’t expect to build Stonehenge and Great Wall, settle 7 new cities, and Chariot-rush Montezuma all before 1 AD. I’m not saying it’s impossible… just that it’s a good idea to pick one early-game goal (keeping tip #1 above, in mind) and go all out for it.

5. Build a Worker first (almost always). Research worker techs first. Hook up food, then Copper, Iron, and/or Horses, then anything else. Learn Writing for Libraries. After that, your key early-game tech is Currency. The extra trade route should keep your expansion financially viable, and being able to build Wealth will save you if the extra trade route isn’t enough.

6. If any city is working unimproved tiles, you need more workers. There is no hard and fast rule as to how many workers that is, but even on water-heavy maps, it’s at least one per city.

7. Don’t try to found religions. If you found a religion accidentally, don’t try to spread it. And for god’s sake, don’t adopt it, unless you’re alone or all your neighbours are pagans.

8. For every 5 cities you have, one should be focused on production and building military units almost nonstop. Cottage every other city's flatlands, except for one GP farm.

9. Play the standard BtS game, with generic maps and speeds. You can’t expect general principles to apply to nonstandard versions of Civ4.

10. Get BUG. (Which is BtS Unaltered Gameplay, a mod that puts information at your fingertips without impacting the way the game plays. Searching for the italicized name on this forum should yield results.)

There are plenty of other things that will improve your game - learning to chop properly, not neglecting diplomacy, how to leverage tech trades, when to generate GP and what to do with them, etc, etc - but the above 10 points are the basics, IMO. You shouldn't worry about the other stuff until you have the basics down.

been reading this forum for many many years - never posted (I don't think???)

Just thought I would add these are probably the 10 best principles for newbie players to go by.

My list of 5 things to follow I give to new players are all encompassed here and then some! I will use this when I can convince new players to play civ 4 with me

I disagree with (8)... and only (8). Good points otherwise.

Oh - and you might want to tell newcomers what BUG is...

coanda said:

I disagree with (8)... and only (8). Good points otherwise.

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Are you not a fan of cottages in general, or do you disagree with the ratios? To me, cottage-based commerce is the simplest approach for beginners.

Oh - and you might want to tell newcomers what BUG is...

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Duly edited.

I would expect if you disagree with it, you are beyond requiring these recommendations.

I would say for the people this is targeted at BUG is the only thing that wouldn't neccessarily be required but once you play a few games its worth its weight in gold (or commerce as it would be more aptly transferred to science/knowledge)

I still use cottages as the situation sometimes cannot be manipulated enough to run better economies.

I have no objection whatsoever to the advice to cottage up. It is far simpler than specialists and totally sufficient on any map on lower difficulties.

But a "one-in-five" rule often simply isn't reflective of the terrain you have available; furthermore, sometimes it's far from reflective (you may get a game with 4 good production sites and just 2 sites you can make into commerce cities, or you may get a game with no production sites but lots of cities that can manage a little production). So a 1-in-5 rule could lead some new players to confidently charge off and make really terrible city decisions.

Of course, with no rule newcomers will also make really terrible city decisions, but at least they won't feel the confidence of "following advice" when they make them so hopefully they'll learn from the mistakes.

coanda said:

I have no objection whatsoever to the advice to cottage up. It is far simpler than specialists and totally sufficient on any map on lower difficulties.

But a "one-in-five" rule often simply isn't reflective of the terrain you have available; furthermore, sometimes it's far from reflective (you may get a game with 4 good production sites and just 2 sites you can make into commerce cities, or you may get a game with no production sites but lots of cities that can manage a little production). So a 1-in-5 rule could lead some new players to confidently charge off and make really terrible city decisions.

Of course, with no rule newcomers will also make really terrible city decisions, but at least they won't feel the confidence of "following advice" when they make them so hopefully they'll learn from the mistakes.

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My intent was that the tips should be read more or less in order, with tip #1 being the overall guiding principle... if you don't have flat land to cottage, you don't have cottage cities. And of course, another way to read #8 could be that the goal is to have that 4:1 ratio, eventually... if you don't have commerce-friendly land, go out and capture some with the production cities you have already.

Nonetheless, point taken. There's a delicate balance between keeping to as general principles as possible, and steering someone who is in an unusual situation, wrong.

Yeah, I kinda see your point, Coanda, but I think that it's a worthy goal to strive for. Maybe the guide could be tweaked to say that? "Try for one in five cities..."? For me personally, I usually don't aim for a certain mix of one or the other (though I have a natural tendency for commerce).

I'm wondering about a few of the things missing, though: catapults are easy enough to add in and "don't build lots of wonders" is another common one that helps a lot.

I've never used BUG, so I'm unsure why that is included on your tyro list. Perhaps one of the above could replace it (assuming you want 10 rules to live by in civ 4)?

"11. You will never get a universal list of 10 points to live by in Civ 4"

was suggested by one of my friends I play with to be added to it. I totally agree- everything will be debated and requested. This is just a good starting point I think for those that are struggling to get by on difficult below Noble

A starting point was the goal. These are the real basics, generally with a focus on the first 4 millennia. Get your empire started based on basic principles, and by 1 AD, you'll be in a sound position to start thinking about things like catapults.

point 8 is contradicting point 1 even if cottage economies tend to be easier to manage.

Problem is with the land you get. It's actually hilarious what you can get. For example I was in last few days preparing map for YT demonstration of my view on industrial transition thinking

"yeah just roll low sea level continents, own my continent around 1500 AD, prepare hammer economy and stop around steam power".
Instead I ended with
"yup peacefully got 17 cities, why roll for another 17 from AI's, 1300 AD 1T to Democracy with 47 cottages laying around", but it just made more sense then the first assumption!

otoh I tried some other map from someone here on noble thinking
"yeah just show him some big expansion fueled by cottages" and ended with
"well such crap land! make just GLH, spam coastal and make everywhere farms and mines".

So that's why I don't like your tip number 8 and I suppose Coanda is in the same boat.

I usually disagree with point 6.
Simple example: a grasland hill mine vs. a 1f2h forest gives one more hammer.
A worker costs 60h and holds the cities growth.

The goal should not be to only work improved tiles at all times, but to plan ahead if you can send a worker there in x turns, safe yourself the hassle to build another, and live with 1h less for a while which is often not a big deal.

Of course a tile like pigs or gems should always be improved as soon as possible
But that has more to do with correct worker movement, and not wasting time with cottages that are not even on a river.

Worker Optimisation is a good skill but probably something you learn after the basics, as even things like knowing to mine hill pigs if you need prodution over food in the early game while skipping AH on tech become part of that. But I'd probably reword 6 to something like Try to work only Improved Tiles, if most/all your cities are working unimproved ones you may need an extra worker or two.

Got any tips for somebody like me.In a game yesterday i was surrounded by alexander,gilamesh and shaka.they were all different religions and none of the religions spread in my lands,as a consequence my state could not grow because of unhappiness which meant slower reserarch.
eventually they dogpiled me and we all know fighting three als is hard enough,but fighting these three fearless warriors is impossible.

I like your points, but maybe there should be one more point about how to deal with unhappiness properly in the early game. When I was a beginner I really struggled to grow my cities if I didnt have like 2 very early happiness resources.

Thoughts on getting started.

i) Start by building a worker while researching worker techs. Agric,AH, mining and BW are probably the first four depending on your starting resources, hunting is good if you've got elephants or deer, wheel and mysticism can wait a bit.

ii) Improve resources before building roads (work the resource once improved!).

iii) Explore. Build warriors (or scouts if you have hunting) after first worker and send them out exploring. You can't play the map until you know the map.

iv) Plan. If you've got a close neighbour and a military resource (copper or horses) then you can think about a rush. If you've got space to grow then think about peaceful expansion.

v) Focus on implementing the plan and don't get side-tracked.

v) Don't build a wonder before you've got two cities (settled or captured).

The one thing this thread illustrates beautifully is how everyone has a different idea of what constitutes a set of fundamental, basic tips.

No doubt, there is room for debate over which tips are necessary, which aren’t, and which have been wrongly omitted from the list. And if you wanted to be really thorough, the list could go to 15, 20, or even 50 tips, probably.

However, my intent was to show an accessible route to winning on levels up to about Noble. Unquestionably, there are other ways to do that… but to go into all those other ways would make the route much less accessible to newcomers to the game. In the end, I was aiming for an uncomplicated response to the oft-heard complaint “I can’t beat Noble!” and the oft-encountered problem of mismanagement in the early game.

christopher1234 said:

Got any tips for somebody like me.In a game yesterday i was surrounded by alexander,gilamesh and shaka.they were all different religions and none of the religions spread in my lands,as a consequence my state could not grow because of unhappiness which meant slower reserarch.
eventually they dogpiled me and we all know fighting three als is hard enough,but fighting these three fearless warriors is impossible.

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Pro tips 1 and 10 . Get BUG. In the normal game, you can talk to the punks every turn to see if they're gearing for war by highlighting the option to get them to go to war. If it's not possible to bribe them, and the reason they give is, "we have too much on our hands right now," they're gearing for war. Try to get them to declare on someone else as best you can; yes, it's definitely worth giving several technologies to these bullies--much better than losing cities or even just slowing your economy to defend yourself.

For your current game, my advice is to keep trying to get them to "bury the hatchet.". If you defeat their first wave of attackers, you should be able to agree to peace.

Also, did you have open borders with them? That's usually the easiest way to get happies for your city.

christopher1234 said:

Got any tips for somebody like me.In a game yesterday i was surrounded by alexander,gilamesh and shaka.they were all different religions and none of the religions spread in my lands,as a consequence my state could not grow because of unhappiness which meant slower reserarch.
eventually they dogpiled me and we all know fighting three als is hard enough,but fighting these three fearless warriors is impossible.

Click to expand...

You can deal with happiness issues with either resources or ( the more reliable way ) the usage of hereditary Rule and cheap military untis as garrison.

Tough cookie on the diplo: as they are all warmongers, they get warmonger respect inbetween them, none of them cares much with religion and as soon as one attacks you, the others will most likely sense the blood in the water. Well, most likely the best awnser to that is "why haven't you attacked one of them before they attacked you?" You don't need tech superiority to attack someone especially in the early game and a preemptive attack would give you more land and one less oponent ... As it is now ... well, buckle up, kill enough of their units and make peace :/