why do I always come in 2nd??

[Sedai]

It seems, no matter what I try, even on the easy difficulty, that I invariably end up in second all the time. No matter which course of action I take to win, my score is always second. If I try to shuttle, I am one piece behind the other guy. My economy is cranking, I take out another civ early and get mucho land and many cities, but still, always second.

Help!!!!

[Chieftess]

Conquer everyone! Also, read the Strategies & Tips forum, and the War Academy link on the main site (www.civfanatics.com).

[Hooray]

Also, think about what determines score. You may have a large land area, but does someone else have an even larger one? Same goes for population. What's your military like, or your infrastructure? Many different things determine the strength of your civ.

You're lacking in some regard, and once you figure out what it is, improve it.

From my own experiences, my guess is that you're lacking infrastructure and improvements, but I'd have to know more to say for sure.

[wilbill]

Don't worry too much about the score. As you improve your play, it really won't matter that much, although by the latter part of the game, you should be among the top in score.
When you reach the point where the early part of the game is over - about the beginning of the Middle Ages, stop and take a look at the situation. Try to figure out which of the victory conditions is going to be best for you. Already knocked out one or two AI's - maybe you should follow Chieftess' advice and go for a Domination. Several techs ahead of everyone - max your science and go for the Spaceship. Not the biggest civ but good relations with everyone - build the UN and win a Diplomatic.
You can't lock in on one if it doesn't turn out to be right, but I find it's best to have a pretty good idea what I'm going for by the Industrial era at the latest.

[AIL]

Try a game on the highest difficulty-setting and I promise you, you won't finished 2nd... More likely to be 2nd to be annhilated!

[Shirastro]

There is another -not so corect- way to be first. If you have a tech lead once you enter modern age, start building space ship, but dont build the last part. Once you resarched ICBM's build a lot of them ( A LOT). Once you have 50-100 (wich isn't so hard to obtain), start building your last part of the ship. Once your one turn away of copleting it, just lunch all your ICBMs to any civ that you think could be better than you. If you think that they have ICBMs too than youd better build M. Deffens first.

[Sedai]

some good ideas here, and I will try some of them. I tend to be a peaceful player after a certain time is reached in the game, as I try to eliminate a neighbor during ancient/Midieval and then go into democracy and max my economy/production, I think I tend to linger and research too many techs and that is why I fall behind sometimes techwise. I need to get over not having some of the techs in an age before leaving it, I tend to not want to leave the age until completed. Still deciding whO I like to play as well. Babylon seems good, and I want to try Egypt as I felt babylon was too slow on improving terrain, but I loved the science and religion bonuses. I tried china with no luck and I think I'll try persia soon as well.

Thanks for the advice folks

[zerksees]

If you are peaceful you should be sure to play a civ that is not militaristic. I suggest Persia, as the scientific and industrious traits are quite powerful.

If you are not already doing this I suggest skipping any tech that has the little circle with line through it, unless you need it as part of your strategy. Those techs are optional (like music theory), meaning you do not need to research them to get to the next level, and researching them will slow you down.

I also suggest trading for techs, instead of researching them all yourself, though I am not sure this is necessary at chieftain it sure can help.

[jm chen]

Originally posted by zerksees
If you are peaceful you should be sure to play a civ that is not militaristic. I suggest Persia, as the scientific and industrious traits are quite powerful.

I agree. Persia is an excellent starting civ, especially with the strategy you mentioned of taking out at least one civ early. (Love those Immortals!)

Don't linger in an age to finish researching -- go ahead and research something from the next age. You can then trade it to the other civs and pick up all those older techs for a song.

What size world are you on? Tiny is easiest to manage.

[Sedai]

Standard map size, as on the smaller maps the expansionist civs have a brutal start during land-grab time, and I can't seem to get enough land fast enough, even though I get the settler machine city going quickly, using the strats for the settler city found in the article called Babylon Settlers or something along those lines that I found in the war academy.

[DBear]

This was much worse in Civ2. In Civ2 I would always have one AI civ start running away with the game.

[Sedai]

To be honest, I liked Civ 2 and played it somewhat, but the diplomacy seemed completely unintelligable to be. I could never make heads or tails of what the diplomacy engine was up to. Civ 3 diplomacy seems to have some rhyme and reason to it. The last sentence was brought to you by cliche'

[Sunthas]

Originally posted by Shirastro
There is another -not so corect- way to be first. If you have a tech lead once you enter modern age, start building space ship, but dont build the last part. Once you resarched ICBM's build a lot of them ( A LOT). Once you have 50-100 (wich isn't so hard to obtain), start building your last part of the ship. Once your one turn away of copleting it, just lunch all your ICBMs to any civ that you think could be better than you. If you think that they have ICBMs too than youd better build M. Deffens first.

I wouldn't think this would work... Score is an average of all your turns right? So eliminating another race right before the end of the game shouldn't change your score all that much?

[kb2tvl]

To boost your score, start with the largest population. This can be done with granaries and irigation and higher forms of governements suchs as Republic and keeping your people with luxaries and buildings for happiness. Next, your expansion phase and getting a simple culture building up is very important. A cultural expansion will increase your land area and increase your score. Also, a granary will boost your population growth which will allow more settlers and then more land area.

On the spaceship, I don't build a spaceship untill I have most of the tech researched. Once I can build ICBMs I will build the spaceship parts and start on building ICBMs. Time the finish turn of the ICBM with when you will acquire a new tech. This will allow for quick production of the part. OR you can produce a lot of ICBM and switch them all at once when you have every tech learned.

[troytheface]

(Huge map-Emperor) .Build embassys with all civs. Gather up cash or use tech to trade for mutual protection pacts or military alliance against the #1 civ.
Attack the #1 civ asap. Soon it should be all against that #1 civ.
Unless they are way out in front they will soon feel the weight of this multi alliance- and in my last game- even if they are way out in front- it will give u space to build a key wonder such as the UN.
I prefer militaristic civs- an army will be left alone usually by the ai-
this means that if u put some cavalry with an army of say infantry,
and they can get into the #1's terrritory then you can pillage around main cities, cutting them off of supplies and reducing population. Germany is a good civ for this strategy. Time for Diety.

[Underseer]

I'm no expert, but I'm betting you should read all you can on "REXing" (Rapid EXpansion). Rapid expansion in the early game is utterly crucial regardless of whether you're a builder, warmonger or whatever.