A few helpful tips.

[FuzzyWeasel]

Heya folks... thought I would share a few tips I've discovered that helped alot.


- When building settlers or workers go into your city and reassign workers to get your production high and food even. You aren't getting the extra food anyways so may as well build faster.

- Barbarians are dumb. They almost always attack you. Even if you have woodsmen archers on a forested hill across a river.

- Upgrade your "experienced" units. That archer you had on that hill for 2000 years makes a MEAN longbowman... or more.

- Always found at least one religion. The gold you can get from this just in your own cities when you get a great prophet is sizeable. And some of the religions are in research paths you'd be going down anyways. If you build the great-prophet building then every city in the world with that religion present gives you gold per turn.

- For early peace... spread your religion to your neighbors early. This is really easy by building a city on "their" river. The connected trade route together with an open border spreads the religion for you.

- Try to spread your religion to the enemy capitals BEFORE they have chosen a religion. Non-religified civs seem to buy into new religions easy. Then you have a friend for life. (until you kill them)

- Specialize your cities. Make one a "religious" center, one a "culture", one an "engineer". Try to build corresponding wonders in those cities. And BE SURE to make specialists in those cities. Try to make your "wonder" cities on stone/marble if you can.

- Manage your city size. No reason to grow too fast. When you aren't wanting to grow build settlers or workers... or reassign area workers as specialists. This is especially necessary when starting on or near floodplains.

- Use those rivers. They have huge economic advantages and the early trade up and down rivers makes for a nice leg up early on.

- If you are doing the religion thing and have made friends... make a run for writing. Its nice to swap technologies. This can make up for a lack of research due to making a run on said religions.

- This is critical... learn what units are strong against what. "Don't go into a gun fight with a knife." Or... dont go into a spearman fight with a mounted unit.

- Pillaging is fun. Those little villages are great money. And the AI likes to rebuild them. Gee, how nice!

- Sleep.

- A tundra area with a river can be useful... villages can be built all up and down the river and you can sometimes snag a useful resource like fur. Dont discount them completely.

- Beware of open borders. If you are in a land-grab contest with a nearby civ... open borders lets their darn settlers walk through your stinking capital to put their crappy city on that @#($@ stone that I wanted to get. (no this hasn't happened to me)

- Love open borders. Your religion spreads easy when you have open borders.

- Dont be a religious fanatic. If everyone else in the world is confucian... darn it... you do to. Note: "everyone else" can easily be replaced with "Ghengis Khan" or "Saladin". Having those bad boys on your side is sometimes enough to say very unpleasant things to the rest of the world and get away with it.

- Multiple religions in your cities doesn't hurt you. In the end, it even helps.

- Make sure your "state" religion is in all your cities. It helps.

- Never get involved in a land war in asia.

- Always invade Sicily.

- Specialize your unit upgrades. Make archers with city defense for that job... etc.

- Stack your unit upgrades. "Aggresive" cit together with a barraks together with proper civics makes your units downright NASTY right out the door.

- Early in the game without a scout... warriors with two "forestry" upgrades do a good job too. They also defend well against barbarians after finished scouting.

- It is relatively easy to cut off an AI enemies supplies to copper, iron, horses, etc. if you know where they are. This makes "aggresive negotiations" much easier.

- Murlocs are evil.



There's some tips. Hope it helps! Hope you enjoy this game as much as I am.

-Fuzzy Weasel

 

[MenacingVitamin]

Great tips!

- When building settlers or workers go into your city and reassign workers to get your production high and food even. You aren't getting the extra food anyways so may as well build faster.

Your extra food turns into production anyway, so this isn't really necessary.

- For early peace... spread your religion to your neighbors early. This is really easy by building a city on "their" river. The connected trade route together with an open border spreads the religion for you.

Cool, I didn't know that rivers create trade routes. I still don't know how the hell religion naturally spreads though. One of my cities got Islam in it yesterday from god knows where. The city was inland and no other civs on my continent had Islam at all.

 

[JavalTigar]

- When building settlers or workers go into your city and reassign workers to get your production high and food even. You aren't getting the extra food anyways so may as well build faster.

I actually gear up my food production since it goes towards building the settler/worker. I had a coastal city with farms and seafood cranking out a settler in 6 turns.

 

[cAPS lOCK]

Cool, I didn't know that rivers create trade routes. I still don't know how the hell religion naturally spreads though. One of my cities got Islam in it yesterday from god knows where. The city was inland and no other civs on my continent had Islam at all.

Don't you mean "from Allah knows where"?

 

[petey]

Cool, I didn't know that rivers create trade routes. I still don't know how the hell religion naturally spreads though. One of my cities got Islam in it yesterday from god knows where. The city was inland and no other civs on my continent had Islam at all.

Religion is spread through trade routes, which the computer assigns automatically and if your city is connected to a coastal city by a road or river, it can get a trade route to another continent. I expect that city had a trade route with some foreign civ that was Islamic and got it from there.

Make sure to build a monastery there and help spread it to the rest of your civ.

 

[MenacingVitamin]

Don't you mean "from Allah knows where"?

Well, since "Allah" means "God" in Arabic, I think I got it right.

 

[EridanMan]

- Sleep.

Gee, I coulda used this one last night....

/zombie this morning

 

[Trismegistus]

Great advice!

I'm'a add/tweak with what I've found so far.

- Try to spread your religion to the enemy capitals BEFORE they have chosen a religion. Non-religified civs seem to buy into new religions easy. Then you have a friend for life. (until you kill them)

This can't be stressed enough. Talking another civ (especially a Spiritual one) out of the very first religion they latched onto is nearly impossible without having most of the rest of the world pressuring them, too. And once they switch to Theocracy, you've got an enemy for life.

- Specialize your cities. Make one a "religious" center, one a "culture", one an "engineer". Try to build corresponding wonders in those cities. And BE SURE to make specialists in those cities. Try to make your "wonder" cities on stone/marble if you can.

A minor point: don't found them ON the marble/stone...just next to. If you found them on top of the resource, you can't build the quarry which gives you the production bonuses. The only time to build on top of the resource is when you need to make 100% sure that someone else doesn't get it, and even then, you're better off cranking up the culture-fest for that city to guarantee its borders.

- Use those rivers. They have huge economic advantages and the early trade up and down rivers makes for a nice leg up early on.

Always build at least one city on a river. I made this mistake and couldn't produce the Three Gorges Dam. It sucked.

- Sleep.

SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK!

- Never get involved in a land war in asia.

- Always invade Sicily.

I've spent the last several years building up an immunity to iocane powder.

- It is relatively easy to cut off an AI enemies supplies to copper, iron, horses, etc. if you know where they are. This makes "aggresive negotiations" much easier.

Having all the food, luxuries and blocks means never having to say you're sorry.

Happy playing

 

[SheckyS]

A minor point: don't found them ON the marble/stone...just next to. If you found them on top of the resource, you can't build the quarry which gives you the production bonuses. The only time to build on top of the resource is when you need to make 100% sure that someone else doesn't get it, and even then, you're better off cranking up the culture-fest for that city to guarantee its borders.

Are you sure of this?
I'm pretty sure that if you build the city right on top of the resource, you get it without building a quarry. This happened to me in a game last night. I had a nice little deposit of marble deep in the rear of my territory. I didn't need it just yet, so I built cities toward my nearest neighbor, Japan. While I was looking toward his borders, he somehow snuck around me with a boat and planted a city right on the Marble. When I eventually took it from him, I got the resource and I was able to build some wonders at double-speed.

I'm not saying you should always build your cities right on top of a resource, but it does seem to work and it will save you the time and effort of building a quarry...

unless I am mistaken.

 

[oxonian2001]

If you build a city directly on top of a resource, you get the benefit of the resource. Trismegistus was referring to the unforunate fact that city squares always produce two food, one hammer, and one commerce, regardless of the underlying terrain. Since a marble or stone resource will produce a LOT of hammers if you build a quarry on it, it is almost always preferable to build your city next to the resource. That way, not only do you get the benefits of the resource (double production for certain wonders), you also get excellent hammer production in your new city.

 

[SheckyS]

If you build a city directly on top of a resource, you get the benefit of the resource. Trismegistus was referring to the unforunate fact that city squares always produce two food, one hammer, and one commerce, regardless of the underlying terrain. Since a marble or stone resource will produce a LOT of hammers if you build a quarry on it, it is almost always preferable to build your city next to the resource. That way, not only do you get the benefits of the resource (double production for certain wonders), you also get excellent hammer production in your new city.

Ah! Good point. I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Ephor]

- Sleep.

Oh yea, it's like fortify for mounted and non-combat units. I didn't think it was so useful, good to know![/jk]

 

[phoulishwan]

- Murlocs are evil.

-Fuzzy Weasel

Murrgllgrrrggglllggrrggll!

They're only evil when they gang bang you! Otherwise they're a cute plush doll

 

[Alistic]

- Specialize your cities. Make one a "religious" center, one a "culture", one an "engineer". Try to build corresponding wonders in those cities. And BE SURE to make specialists in those cities. Try to make your "wonder" cities on stone/marble if you can.

This sounds like a fun, organized thing to do, but it's not prudent.

- Early in the game without a scout... warriors with two "forestry" upgrades do a good job too. They also defend well against barbarians after finished scouting.

Forestry would be a waste of 2 upgrades IMO. Get the strength promotions, and later upgrade these units when you have better tech.

 

[Wlauzon]

- For early peace... spread your religion to your neighbors early. This is really easy by building a city on "their" river. The connected trade route together with an open border spreads the religion for you.

- Try to spread your religion to the enemy capitals BEFORE they have chosen a religion. Non-religified civs seem to buy into new religions easy. Then you have a friend for life. (until you kill them)

- Use those rivers. They have huge economic advantages and the early trade up and down rivers makes for a nice leg up early on.

- Dont be a religious fanatic. If everyone else in the world is confucian... darn it... you do to. Note: "everyone else" can easily be replaced with "Ghengis Khan" or "Saladin". Having those bad boys on your side is sometimes enough to say very unpleasant things to the rest of the world and get away with it.

Lots of good tips there, and often forgotten in the heat of battle, especially the river things. And I have found that if your big civ neighbor is the same religion, they will almost never attack unless you REALLY make them mad. So don't be afraid to switch to Genghis Khan's religion if he is next door and has 3x the military you do.

 

[FuzzyWeasel]

I've spent the last several years building up an immunity to iocane powder.
Happy playing

Heh... Dang it. Now my co-workers are really worried about me because I just snarffed my coke.

Ever see a bleary-eyed, bloodshot, IT geek in at 5am in the morning snorting coke? (err... coca-cola)?

 

[FuzzyWeasel]

This sounds like a fun, organized thing to do, but it's not prudent.

Explain yourself? Because at higher difficulty levels I find it absolutely critical to specialize two or three cities in my empire.

Forestry would be a waste of 2 upgrades IMO. Get the strength promotions, and later upgrade these units when you have better tech.

From my experience the early warriors I build when I dont have scout available immediately bring me a MUCH quicker and greater return on investment with those upgrades. Realistically I dont think anyone expects that warrior to live to be a mechanized infantry (or similar tech level). My first warriors are pure scouts. The forestry upgrades help tremendously both by making them twice as fast and keeping them alive by defending from the trees. By specializing their use as scouts they bring me more than enough benefit to offset their replacement with real troops with real upgrades later.

We all know that the first 1500 years of the game are make-or-break times. Making absolutely sure every unit had upgrades that were appropriate for the length of the entire game despite the critical need for effective early scouting sounds like a fun, organized thing to do, but it's not prudent.

-Weasel

 

[petey]

Explain yourself? Because at higher difficulty levels I find it absolutely critical to specialize two or three cities in my empire.

I agree with this. There are a lot of improvements in this game that stack together well and having them in the same city greatly increases the available bonuses. It takes more planning, but it seems to be well worth it.

From my experience the early warriors I build when I dont have scout available immediately bring me a MUCH quicker and greater return on investment with those upgrades. Realistically I dont think anyone expects that warrior to live to be a mechanized infantry (or similar tech level). My first warriors are pure scouts. The forestry upgrades help tremendously both by making them twice as fast and keeping them alive by defending from the trees. By specializing their use as scouts they bring me more than enough benefit to offset their replacement with real troops with real upgrades later.

The double forestry for the early warrior is great. It's a pretty weak unit and you're likely not going to be using it for anything other than fighting barabarians anyways, so there's no use worrying about combat bonuses when an untrained axeman is going to be more useful in a real fight than this guy will ever be. These upgrades pretty much give you an extra scout that doesn't die off as quickly and is much moe useful than giving combat upgrades to a guy you're not taking into any fights.

 

[galileoooo]

Ha! My only trouble with Civ 4 is I am equally addicted to WOW. Must remember to eat / sleep / shower / make sure I still have a social life.

 

[FuzzyWeasel]

Ha! My only trouble with Civ 4 is I am equally addicted to WOW. Must remember to eat / sleep / shower / make sure I still have a social life.

Yeah. Same here. I wasn't going to buy it or read these boards despite being a MAJOR civ freak. But my lovely wife had it sitting in my chair when I got home the day it came out. Then promptly asked me to help her run 5-man stratholme in wow.

DOH!

Ultimate torture.

-FuzzyWeasel