Anyone Else Really Bad as Civ IV But Still Love It

[isau]

I have a confession to make: I'm terrible at Civ IV, and BTS made it worse.

I lose, or at least get into stalemates, all the time on Warlord difficulty. I might have won on Noble twice out of hundreds of games.

I still love the game though. I'm primarily a modder so maybe these awful skills would improve if I looked at things from less of a 'I want to change this aspect of the game' perspective.

Anyone else out there willing to fess up to their total lack of pwnage?

 

[kneark]

Yea, I suck.

I have not won a game yet. I've been playing on Noble the whole time.

Hopefully I'll start to suck LESS the more I play, but right now it looks like I will never get beyond the Noble level of difficulty--well, not for a long long time.

Only had the game for a little more than a month--but still, to not have won a single game yet is pretty sad I think. (EDIT: Maybe it's closer to two months, don't remember now...)

 

[Kranden]

Do you understand the concepts of whipping and chopping? Do you always try to found your own religion even when the world is against you. Are you focusing too much on wonders and not making enough units. are you over expanding early?

It's most likely these reasons.

 

[Moxxa]

*signs*

I suck at this game but its still a favorite.

 

[Endure]

I'm pretty bad at this game too.

I can dominate on warlord and win most of the time on noble, but beyond noble, I run into trouble in a hurry.

Most of my problem is I get bored micromanging everything and start to automate parts of the game.

/shrug

Micromanging everything is sometimes fun (which is generally when I tend to do extremely well), but often I'll automate workers (as an example). My gameplay suffers but I have more fun that way sometimes.

 

[NintendoTogepi]

I'm lousy but love it still.

I play mostly on Warlord and Noble. I can usually win Warlord but only win like 30 % of my Noble games.

 

[dubrown]

I must confess I'm no master of this game. With Vanilla and Warlord I did win occasionally on Noble but I did everything the wrong way (overbuilding, not enough military, all the wonders are mine and that sort of thing). But when I got BtS I decided to get up some levels and spent a day in this forum studying the art of Civilization. Now, I do consider myself a Monarch level player that will atleast be able to claim a victory quite often, not every time but then, the lost games usually does not run to the end, there I lack some patience....

 

[ubenclagen]

Yes, I can't fight my way out of a paper bag when I play Civ IV, especially now with BTS, but I still play everyday. I try to play on Noble because I read in a thread once that I will never get better playing at a lower level. But I'm so sick of losing (or much more likely, giving up and starting a new game), that right now I'm playing Elizabeth on Warlord. Just so I can possibly win for a change!

I read many threads on strategy and I try to apply what I learn, but there is so much to coordinate that I can't seem to pull it together. I can't figure out how one keeps the economy, military, and teching going at a competitive level at the same time.
If I build my military adequately, my economy goes down the tubes.
If I expand quickly, my economy goes down the tubes.
If I expand conservatively (say, three cities and no more until i get CoL and courthouses), then the AI take all the land.
Then if I try to get enough military to take some cities to expand, I'm back to my economy sucking.
I can recognize when a city would make a good GP city, but I can't seem to make it happen.
Not to mention trying to crank out enough workers to improve my cities while doing all this other stuff!
Not to mention also trying to know what wonders would be best to build and when!

Kranden mentioned some things people do that keep them from doing well, but I'm not doing any of those.

Isau, thanks for asking this question. It finally gave me a thread I felt I could answer!

 

[MyOlde]

I'm right there with Ubenclagen. I've tried Noble a bunch of times and invariably within a few turns I'm behind in points. And I don't know how to catch up. I've decided to stay with Warlord where I'm fairly comfortable, until I get a decent handle on how to juggle all the things there are to juggle. Currently, I'm trying the no-wonders approach, having fallen into the wonders addiction situation spoken of in other threads on this forum.

The hardest thing for me to get past is all the Civ3 habits and having to unlearn so much.

 

[wannabewarlord]

Most of my problem is I get bored micromanging everything and start to automate parts of the game.

I hear you on the micromanaging part. especially once you have a couple of cities it gets tedious to check the city screens every other turn or so.

However, what I found is that running an OCC (one city challenge) game once in a while vastly improves your city management skills.

since you only have one city to take care of, the micromanaging is limited and not as tedious/repetitive. But at the same time, since you can only micromanage one city and it is even more important to do so properly in an OCC, you pay attention to detail. and my reasoning is that once you can manage one city well, you can manage ten city's just as well. you then know more what to check and where to change stuff, so that you go through the city screens with much more ease and success.

cheers
-wannabewarlord

 

[Supr49er]

I have a confession to make: I'm terrible at Civ IV, and BTS made it worse...

Have you tried different leaders? You might find one that is very helpful for your style of play.

For example, if you like to build, the Ind leaders like Ramsses or Huayna Capac are good.

If you like to Rex (Rapid Expansion of your empire) Exp with Fin like Pacal II or with Org like Mehmed II will work.

Don't be afraid to play custom games to tailor the map, victory conditions, always war/peace, barbarian/AI aggression, etc. to fit your style.

Save your games at various points. Try something to see what happens, then restore and try something different.

Finally, enjoy! If it makes you happy to play at Chieftan and build every wonder, and discover every religion, do it.

 

[Fiz]

I do "OK" at BTS, but seldom win. The OCC idea sounds like a good idea, as I don't typically micromanage my cities.

Don't beat yourself up too badly. One thing I've come to realize is that it's not necessarily "bad play" that's doing me in. If you're like me and have things start up randomly with a lot of players, more often than not it's the "player" with the best starting position that's going to win. Just watch the graphs and you can see that the player that gets out of the starting blocks with a strong lead, is tough to beat. I lucked out, once, and actually got three techs from exploring huts! I kicked butt! That's rare, but, again, it's the luck of the draw - no skill.

The lead players have the techs that everyone's willing to trade for, so it's easier for them to build on their lead.

I too enjoy building "things" rather than military, but I've begun setting a rule for myself in which I now build one military unit for each building. Surprisingly, that seems to work out pretty well in keeping me from being overrun.

It does blow my mind how the AI seems to be able to place cities so quickly. I try to limit myself to four cities from the get-go, and hopefully I can position those to isolate my opponents from a good share of the land. The fifth city will eventually come my way when I take over a decently-placed black city. By then, hopefully my finances can support it. If not, I'll wait a few more turns or simply destroy it.

"Chopping" I'm familiar with and it's definitely good for getting going. I'll have to search out "whipping". I'm guessing that's probably sacrificing people for progress. Sounds harsh.

Another mistake I used to make was building a road to every improvement which wastes a lot of time in the early game.

I was always big on getting the Great Wall, but my troops weren't getting any experience fighting the relatively easy rabble. Putting a few warriors (or used-up explorers) on strategic hill-tops (thus reducing the fog of war) keeps the number of random bad buys to a manageable number.

Maybe some of these things can work for you. Let me know.

 

[MyOlde]

"Whipping" is when you have Slavery (Bronze Working) and can indeed sacrifice one or two poor souls to get your settler out or whatever. I always feel squeamish doing it and have to tell myself "It's only a game".

 

[Thorac]

I can beat Warlord most of the time, but only in the space race. Never anything else.

I recently decided to up my game & try Noble - more an even match.

The 1st 2 times, my home city was taken by barbarian archers (some Asyrian random event) before I even had archers...

The next 2 times (no joke) there were no horses & no copper on the entire continent...SLOW going to the point of not fun.

I'm in a decent game now, but there are 5 of us on the continent and Hannibal's spies are crushing city buildings and terrain improvements like 2 per turn...but I'm still ahead of him in points and I only dropped to 2nd when I declared war on Hannibal in retribution and lost a bunch of cheap military units trashing his cottage cities (man, was that lucrative with them all at village level...).

I don't think I can win this one, but at least I'm not losing yet.

 

[Thorac]

I guess here is a question: Should I continue to struggle on Noble, or go back to Warlord until I can win in various (all?) victory conditions?

 

[Supr49er]

I guess here is a question: Should I continue to struggle on Noble, or go back to Warlord until I can win in various (all?) victory conditions?

There is no 'should'. Play how you get the most enjoyment. If you like challenges, continue to play at higher levels. If you enjoy winning/building wonders, etc. play at the level you are comfortable with.

 

[Birdmanthepuny]

I can win 90% of the time at Noble, but it never is easy. I don't spend enough time managing my cities and let them get unhappy-healthy all the time before I fix it. I can't seem to concentrate enough to plan ahead and maximize specialists....But I also can't stop playing the darn game!

 

[Dampier]

I have won just one game on Noble. A domination victory where I just took over everything in sight. I now play on Monarch and generally fall in the middle of the pack. I like to try different strategies each time I play and always use random to pick my civ and leader.

 

[bentley004]

I dont see how people can ever lose on warlord. After reading through sulla's walkthrough to grasp the basic concepts, my first ever game was on warlord and I remember just dominating the tech race and crushing everyone- it wasnt even a contest. Mind you that is with no micromanaging and not even understanding how to really manage things like commerce and hammers- I just built lots of cottages and mined all the hills- even though my cities would stagnate a like 12 pop. didnt matter though... granted this was vanilla, dunno how much better the expansions made the AI on that level.

I went up to noble right after that and never lost there either by just cottage spamming. Prince gave me some early trouble as I feel thats the first level you have to actually understand the more complicated game aspects.

 

[Socratatus]

Yea, i`m terrible as well (on Warlord) I really find it hard.. I play on Warlord and lose every time. I manage to do well at the start, but when i get to around gunpowder, the AI just starts overcoming me. Everything slowsdown (especially if I get in a war) while they boost on. Then they start cutting through my cities like a hot knife through butter. that`s usually when i stop and rest for a month... i`m really good at MTW2 on VH\VH, but CIV always humbles me.

Yet for some reason I keep coming back and trying.

I think it`s the enormous variety of the game and how every game is different and very customisable that keeps me returning. It`s good too. Every game I play always has something new for me.