Need help to not be a complete nubcake.

Hey guys!

Let me introduce myself. I am new to this community, and I saw that Civ was on sale on steam some days ago. So I went ahead and purchased it, because I have heard a lot of it + I have a lot of time to burn when sitting on trains and stuff. I have played the game like, 11-12 hours now, read a little on this site, I think it was calles sistul's basic guide or something. But I still suck at this game.

How long did it take you to get the basics down? How did you learn the game? What would you recommend me to do?

I think it is an awesome game, no doubt about that, I just know that games, especially like these, get a hell of a lot more fun when you really get to understand and get good at the game.

Also, I really didn't expect to go onto this forum seeing so many threads, post and onlines users taking in consideration that this is not a new, or mainstream game.

So all help is very much appreciated. Best regards, Josh.

welcome to the forums! it takes a while to get the basics down. first of all, are you playing on Beyond the Sword, Warlords, or just Civilization 4?

Welcome to CFC!!!

Play BTS

Go here:

advice

then here:

guide for beginners

then mosey on over to here:

war academy

then stumble on over to this place to ask questions and join in forum games:

Strategy & Tips Forum

this ain't a bad place either:

Noble's Club

and everyone's favorite unaltered gameplay mods:

BUG and BULL or BAT

Back before I read these forums, I couldn't beat Warlord for the longest time. After coming here, I could at least beat Noble and sometimes do good on higher levels. You can go fast if you aren't stubborn and want to learn. I'm just too lazy atm to learn any more.

The best way to learn is to play forum games in the strategy forum.

SamSniped said:

welcome to the forums! it takes a while to get the basics down. first of all, are you playing on Beyond the Sword, Warlords, or just Civilization 4?

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Thank you

I am playing BtS, since I heard it was better than vanilla. Bought the set with warlords+bts+col, started with civ4 vanilla, then heard that bts was the way to go. I have played aprox 2 hours bts (and going to play some hours now) and 10 hours vanilla.

Great! here's advice from others:

lymond said:

Welcome to CFC!!!

Play BTS

Go here:

advice

then here:

guide for beginners

then mosey on over to here:

war academy

then stumble on over to this place to ask questions and join in forum games:

Strategy & Tips Forum

this ain't a bad place either:

Noble's Club

and everyone's favorite unaltered gameplay mods:

BUG and BULL or BAT

Click to expand...

Archon_Wing said:

The best way to learn is to play forum games in the strategy forum.

Click to expand...

I started out when vanilla was still new enough that, over a week or so, I was able to read everything in the Newbie Questions thread, which would be impossible today. However, even before that, I learned the basics by starting lots of games with the intention to focus on learning how a specific feature in the game worked, ignoring everything else, and planning to quit the game when I either had that feature figured out or I got attacked with an overwhelming force. I probably played a dozen partial games that way before playing a real game, on Settler of course. I then played a game to win each of the victory types, to learn how they worked, before moving up to Chieftain and playing for one of each victory before moving up a level again, repeat process move up, repeat….. Meanwhile, I had discovered the forums here and read all the stuff in the War Academy, read the newbie thread, and asked lots of questions. If your the patient type and want to get all the details, I still recommend that as a way to start out, except you can't read the entire newbie thread anymore, unless you have a lot of down time and patience!

If the number of articles out there seems overwhelming, try watching a Let's Play video on Youtube. I learned a lot from TheMeInTeam's video channel (his Charlemagne series might be a good place to start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjVZQzPVCBs&feature=related).

These videos are pretty quick, played at a high difficulty, and don't guide you through every step. But they should give you an idea about the sort of decisions you need to be making throughout a game (initial tech choices; barb spawn busting; early expansion; diplomatic manoeuvring; stack composition & siege warfare, etc.).

@ Josh

I learned by reading some strategy articles to help me understand basic concepts then I'd throw in my own personal twist and style. I like to do things quite predictably so when I first started I'd play the same map over literally 100-200x for the 1st 100-125 turns or so. This let me get a feel for timing and how to expand the quickest way possible, etc. Later I'd do the same thing up till Liberalism.

Although every map is different they can typically be fit into some type of generic category that makes it similar to another game you've already played....... and after dozens of practice starts you eventually get a pretty strong grasp on what will work best for the given land/AIs around you.

I learned best by reading things in the War Academy I was struggling with. That's probably your best bet, along with reading Sisiutil's "All Leader Challenge" episodes.

JoshFiveO said:

I am playing BtS, since I heard it was better than vanilla.

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But it's also harder than Vanilla and has many more and more complex game concepts than Vanilla. So if your problem is the difficulty and complexity of BTS I strongly recommend playing a bit more Vanilla until you know what you're doing there. Less sometimes is more, and I'd say you should concentrate on the basiscs first. If you really know what you're doing, you can always go to BTS to make things more complex. And always start with small maps, few opponents and short gameplay and raise the parameters if you feel you can cope with more. Also save your game if you're unsure what to do, try different strategies and compare the results. Actually save the game in the year 4000 BC and try to replay the whole story and see if you can make improvements - not only based on knowledge of the map but in how you handle things.

As far as I am concerned I started playing Civ as a casual player more than twenty years ago and am still learning new stuff today in each game of Civ IV I play or here in those great forums.

I started playing a little over a year ago and had literally no idea what I was doing until I came to these forums. Now I play Emperor level, and I'm sure people move up through the difficulties much more quickly than that.

Sisuitil's All Leaders Challenge series was huge for me learning the game, mainly because he went to war early and often. I think that's the toughest thing for new players to learn, and getting good at it also makes the game way more entertaining, imho.

Right now, Oz-Man is playing some really enjoyable games on the Strategy and Tips forum and I think you'll get something out of following those, too.