Advice for a rookie

[morpheus11]

I have been lurking this site and playing Civ 4 for about a year now. I have read every article in the War Academy and most of the threads in the the sub forum here. I understand that no matter what I will always be a rookie b/c this is my first civ game and I don't spend as much time playing as some people here. So, I am looking for some advice on managing a game between sessions and outside of the game itself.

I am married and have a full time job so I rarely get much more than an hour to play at a time. I am currently playing on Vanilla civ 4 and at warlord difficulty. I when most of the time there, but I usually get slaughtered in the late game on noble. So, I am using the warlord difficulty to help me manage late game situations better.

Anyway, I think part of my problem is not playing the game with the same line of thinking. I don't take any notes and just recently started making dot maps. Several times when I jump into a game for the second time I notice things that I am not sure why I did them, but since I don't have any notes I have no idea what I was thinking. Do people here take notes while they are playing a game for fun? Do you take a lot of screen shots and then go back through them before you start a session? How do you keep your "master plan" going in the same direction between sessions of the game?

Secondly, I play all my games at normal speed and I finish them in less then 12 hours of playing time. Is this too fast? Again I usually only play for an hour a session so sometimes when I get done I feel like I might have rushed too much.

Lastly, I have some questions about how people do their dot maps. I have just recently started down this, but I have been doing them within the game by using signs and the strategy layer in the globe view. Does most people here take screen shots and use paint to make their dot maps or is there a better way?

Thanks for any help you guys can provide. I would like to improve enough so that I can realistically compete in the Adventure challenges, but if I can win at noble then there is no point going higher.

 

[Norvin_Green]

welcome to the CFC! i run into the same problem too. i have started using alt-S and leave notes for myself. also, i will use the alt-S to remind me what tiles need what improvements. it also wouldn't hurt to jot down a few notes about your diplomatic situation, possible tech trades, wonders you might want to build, etc. most of all have fun!

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I only play a couple hours a night as well (primarily thanks to Heroes, House, Law & Order: SVU, Mythbusters, Kitchen Nightmares and Last One Standing).

Like Norvin Green said, take a few minutes to jot down a couple notes before getting up from the game. If you're like me, you'll spend half of your sessions just trying to figure out what you were doing and why you were doing it in the last session.

As far as dotmapping, I used the strategy layer before I got Photoshop. I find Photoshop to be easier but not really more effective.

What has improved my dotmapping is to write out the +food and production capabilities of each city and think of what type of city the empire needs most next. I can use that to plot out my next cities to make the most use of the land based on what my empire needs.

For example, if your capital has 3 food resources (like 3 seafood), it can run high +food at low population -- making it a good GP farm candiate. If you decide early to make it a GP farm, then it's "other" tiles are less vital and more subject to overlap. So in that case, if the only production for miles are the hills in your capital, you'd be more inclined to give up those hills so your 2nd city can utilize them for production (since the GP farm will only need them every so often).

Likewise, if you realize your first 3 cities are all high production centres, you know you need to dotmap a couple commerce locations to augment your empire.


-- my 2

 

[morpheus11]

What has improved my dotmapping is to write out the +food and production capabilities of each city and think of what type of city the empire needs most next. I can use that to plot out my next cities to make the most use of the land based on what my empire needs.

That is a good idea that I hadn't thought of. I will have to try that out.

Right now I just use the signs and strategy layer and maybe part of my problem is I don't use them enough. Is there a way to turn off the signs without erasing them so they don't clutter the area?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Right now I just use the signs and strategy layer and maybe part of my problem is I don't use them enough. Is there a way to turn off the signs without erasing them so they don't clutter the area?

Hmm. IIRC, the strategy layer is only visible in the globe view, so I don't remember ever turning that off. Signs (outside of the strategy layer at least) might be something I've never used at all.

I typically screenshot/dotmap with resources and tile grid on and Fog/etc. off.

Resource tags toggle with <Ctrl>+<r>.
Tile grid toggles with <Ctrl>+<t>.
The Fog, units and city tags toggle with <Ctrl>+<b>.​

I hope that helps ...

 

[morpheus11]

I will have to give some of this stuff a shot tonight if I find time to play.

Thanks.

 

[Eunomiac]

My favorite trick is to get some graph paper and make a chart with a bunch of columns:

| TECHS | PLAN (this one's a pretty wide column la la la la ) | City 1 | City 2 | City 3 | City 4 | ... |

Then I have room to write out my planned tech path down the left side, and jot little notes about what I'm planning to do next in the second column (placed where/when I plan to do it, using my tech path as a sort of timeline), and then I can do more detailed planning for each of my cities (without getting overwhelming, like micromanaging every tile of every city). Between that and a good print-out of your continent, I'm set. Regarding the latter, you'll be surprised how easy it is to combine screenshots together using Paint, then shrink the whole image down so it's not too big (ignore the dotmaps I drew on here; it was for another thread where I was asking for advice):

Hope that's helpful!

 

[morpheus11]

I like that chart idea. I will have to give that a try.

Thanks,

 

[oyzar]

When i play pitboss i allways plan loads of turn advance... You could translate it into sp i guess. Basically at any given point there will be loads of non-interactivity that you can plan pretty far ahead... I don't necessarily write down all my plans but like to use alt + s to mark city sites etc at least.