Basic Strategies

[OverclockN']

I have been trying since I purchased this game to understand all the aspects of it, but it seems that I cannot grasp the concepts as easily as I'd like. I cannot do well at all Noble difficulty, and Warlord still presented quite a challenge. I have never won a game yet or had a score that got higher than Dan Quayle as the leadership.

I'm not sure what I could be doing wrong, as I've wasted many games getting completely dominated in all aspects of the game. I've gone through the beginner thread stickied at the top of this forum and have not been able to extract any stategies to help me earn any of the victory methods.

My biggest issues seem to be financial and technology. I usually capture a couple early religions and am able to make a couple holy cities relatively early in the game. I try sending Missionaries to towns to try and earn more gold to fund my causes, but I still always struggle to maintain any sort of positive financial lead. Technology is difficult also, but I suspect that I'm always behind because my money is low and I have to lower my research to keep a positive income.

I'm looking for some basic tips on things that I could do to improve financially and in the tech race. I've gone through all kinds of searches online for strategy tips and read through the manual and threads here and still can't grasp all the concepts of this game or realize what I could change to become more efficient.

Any help is appreciated!

 

[WTBCzero]

Could you post some saves from some of your games?

 

[OverclockN']

Yeah, I could do that. I'll post a save from a previously completed game. The game was ended due to the time limit and I was at the bottom of the 3 CIvilizations. Played against 2xAI. Will post it in a few moments.

 

[madscientist]

Welcome to the boards. Try posting a starting position and play it out with advice from the forum, that will help.

From what you say so far, maybe these pointers can help.

1) There is a difference between commerce and gold. Commerce you get from working tiles in the city screen and trade routes. Commerce can be turn into science (beakers), gold, culture (once you tech currency) or espionage by adjusting teh slider %. Gold you get from shrines, running merchants, trades, and decreasing your science slider.
2) Sounds like you are founding too many religions. Try playing without any or getting a later one. Tech military and worker techs (agriculture, pottery).
3) Speaking of which are you usign a worker to build farms for food, and cottages for commerce. Cottages are the best way of getting commerce.
4) Try the financial or organized trait until you win a game.
5) Wonders are OK, but you have to build them intelligently. You may want to forget building all but a few until you learn the basics (The oracle, great library are favorites).
6) Military, bulding too many will bankrupt you, building too few will get yourself killed.
7) DO NOT OVER EXPAND!!! Don't build too many cities until you have techs that help maintain them such as currency and Code of Laws.
8) Understand you can built units and building faster by chopping forrests with workers (after you tech Bronze Working) and using Slavery.
9) Alot of people post their own game son this forum, read some threads and follow the games.
10) Have fun.

 

[OverclockN']

Here is a link from a previously completed game. In this game, I tried to go for the Space Race win. I was winning at first, but eventually was passed and was being beaten by another AI that was pushing parts of it out much faster. I don't even think I was able to complete one part. Of course, this wasn't a great effort anyway since the game ended sooner than it could be completed anyway. Bad decision on my part, but I'm still learning.

Anyway, I'm just looking for advice on how to do things a bit differently in anything that you guys may see. I can post other saves as well.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/128309/Noble_-_Bismarck_-_2xAI.Civ4SavedGame


EDIT:
A quick note about this game. I saw the end in sight and no way to complete what I was aiming for. At the very end, I had made the decision to try and defend my territory with a superior navy since I had an entire continent to myself. I was going to play this game out a bit longer after Hatshepsut won to mess around and try to get a domination. Just ignore all the Destroyers everywhere...

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

Try to specialize a few cities. A production city can crank out units/SS parts, a commerce city can help pay matenince costs, ect....

Check out the War Academy here, you can get tips and tricks there!

 

[erikthecelt]

I'm at work so I can't check your save game but the tech path is one place where I took a long time to learn a few tricks.
For conquest/domination tech to copper, wheel and iron first if you are not playing HC (if HC you are just building quechas so you can work on any tech), for space, diplo or culture go hunting, Animal Husbandry, Writing, Alpha, Math, Currency. Trade and sell techs then Lit for GL and CS for Bureaucracy. Then tech to Liberalism.
Don't trade Alpha to the AI until after Currency. Gift one cheap tech to each civ the first time you talk to them after learning Alpha for the + relations.
Focus your cities on one thing - hammers, commerce, gold or food.
Build enough workers so that you never work an unimproved tile - don't build the workers until you have something for them to do.

 

[johncross21]

I have looked at your game

it looks pretty able in many respects (you must not be too put off with the Dan Qualye score - its common even when you win)

I did have some possible solutions but they are all opinion - perhaps try a couple

- seem to have a lot of units (and some completely redundant). that warrior is expensive and not much help in a war - delete it and save yourself some cash - the AI is not great at invasions from the sea so light defence of interior cities is the order of the day - defend horse/iron from your garrison unless you are at war

- seems very scarcely populated. you have a big continent you could put another city in the interior ?

- no big production centre - put that new city in the grasslands interior surrounded by hills and mine/mill them to produce military units

- you might try warmongering - get yourself an early toe hold on another continent (you need astronomy reasonably early in the game) and then use it as a bridgehead for invasion when you are ready

- don't skip techs like education - it slows development in other areas

- no big production centre - put a city in the grasslands interior surrounded by hills and mine/mill them to produce military units

- beaurocracy - good for Berlin but not many other advantages (probably expensive)

 

[Heffling]

What rules of thumb do you utilize when playing?

Some that I generally use are:

1) Slow or stop expansion when I am around 50% research rate. Building or conquering more cities at this point will ultimately slow my research rate.

2) Keep cities at roughly +4 food per turn. More than this and you will be growing and increasing upkeep without increasing productivity. Less than this and the city is growing too slowly to be useful in the near future.

3) Halt city growth when I reach happyness cap. Run specialists or work production or commerce tiles instead of food.

4) Make sure cities I place have access to resources. Filler cities should only be built post 1000 AD.

5) Never fear trading technologies with the AI.

6) Research techs that none of the AI's have, then trade this tech to get multiple techs you don't have.

These don't apply always, but you'll learn when to ignore your own rules as you get more experience.

 

[TheStealthRhino]

In my opinion, the best way to learn, other then through playing via trial and error, is to go through the ALL LEADER CHALLENGE games posted by Sisiutil.

The games he plays are so detailed, regarding city position, resource management, tech tree division, wonders, etc.

If you see how someone plays successfully, you can imploy some of the same tactics to your game.

[Sisiutil also posted a beginners guide, as well as an intermediate gambit guide with tricks and the like]

 

[Big Boss Man]

I think reading Sisiutil's Stratagy guide for beginners would help you out .
Bush up at the war academy on everthing .
Try playin at a lower difficuty setting and try out some new plans .

Make fewer quallity cities , settle areas with 2 or more food . Learn BW early to chop forests , chopping boosts early production of workers , settlers and wonders .
Learn about slingshots to tech up faster . Study army tactics to stave off invaders and how to invade rivals . Master empire mangement for it is mighty . Control choke points for they are vital . Blah Blah Blah
you haven't clicked the back button to get to War Academy yet ?

Good luck

 

[xanadux]

I'm doing a Prince level walkthrough with emphasis on basics such as city builds, worker improvements, economy development, tech paths, empire management and planning.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=245549

This should help anyone struggling at monarch or below.

 

[OverclockN']

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll definitely consider everything each of you had to say.

In the meantime, I started a new game this afternoon and will be trying to include some of the advice that you guys gave me.

This game seems to have started off well, and I am trying to focus my cities more on doing one thing rather than just randomly creating things. I lowered the difficulty once again, this time to Chieftan. I'm going to take a slower approach until I at least learn the basic elements of this game. I'd like you guys to take a look and see what you think so far. This is my first Civilization game, so I'm totally new to this.

Thanks again!!


http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/128309/Chieftan_-_Bismarck_-_3xAI.Civ4SavedGame

 

[xanadux]

I just took a look at your last save.

One thing you are doing right ... paying attention to your economy. You have done a good job of building and working cottages.

The biggest problem I see at first glance is city placement. Pretty much all of your cities are too far apart and waste good land. Those you have settled seem to be in relatively random positions.

cologne misses both rice and cows by 1 tile for no reason. Hamburg could have wheat, but instead doesn't and has a food resource ... bananas that arent worked and still covered by jungle. There is no city between these 2 for the rice and fish. Essen will be a good city, but the resources of this little peninsula could make 3 good cities, but not with Essen where it is.

There is absolutely incredible flood plain land East and North of Berlin, for 2 or 3 incredibly good cities, yet many inferior cities have been settled instead.

Munich is again too far from the capital, and should have been closer, again wasting valuable flood plain tiles. Frankfort has no purpose at all, seeming to be founded to be as useless as possible by missing 2 food resources by 1 square each.

I see several workers making roads to nowhere.

Berlin is working a 4 food tile instead of a couple flood plains cottages.

You are still killing the game because it is chieftain, you have done well to expand quickly, and have paid attention to the economy. I would suggest play at noble to learn from your mistakes, and particularly focus on learning good city placement. One bit of advice is to try not to waste any food resource, and to found as many cities as possible with 2 or more food resources in their workable 'fat cross'.

 

[OverclockN']

I guess I'm totally confused on the city placement aspect. I placed each of those cities to capture all of the resources that I saw on the map. There are some that I haven't had a chance to get to yet, but the cities I have placed were put there only with the intention of getting the resources that are near them. Some cities I placed just a tile or so off a resource because there were 2 or 3 resources near that city. I placed the cities where I did so when they expanded once, I would capture all of those resources at one time. This game is still in progress and I still have workers trying to work the resources. The bananas are one of those examples.

I'll have to take a look again, but I'm fairly certain I don't have any workers sitting idle or building roads to nowhere. I sent one worker off to build a road I think toward copper or iron with the intention that the city was expanding soon and as soon as it expands, that worker will be there and the road already built.

So you're saying cities should be placed much closer together? How does that work with expansion if each city is expanding into each other? I was always trying to space out and grab all the resources I could see on the map. I shouldn't be doing that though? It seems kind of silly to place a bunch of cities really close to each other and ignore resources that are just barely a little ways off.

Also, I was trying to dedicate some cities to other purposes like building, commerce, etc. I can't remember the city name off hand, but the one at the very top was my unit city. I placed it near the gold resource and a ton of hammers to crank out military units.

Thanks for the advice, I'll need to look at my city placement more. I still don't understand why I should pack them all together rather than spread out and pick up the valuable resources. Should I have them closer together so they are easy to defend?

Thanks!

 

[OverclockN']

Some notes on my cities. Please comment and tell me where I went wrong:

Cologne: Placed in center of 3 resources. Cow, Rice, and Elephants. City needs one expansion and I have all 3 of those resources captured. I thought placing the city in the middle of all these was perfect.

Essen: Placed to immediately take over Sugar and Bananas(worker is on that tile, it is next to be worked). One expansion and it will cap both cows and bananas. Just a bit north of it is Dye, which it should easily expand to cap that as well.

Hamburg: Placed in the middle of Iron, Copper, Wheat, Dye, Cows, and Bananas. All of which are now within its borders and can be worked.

Munich: Placed among territory rich in hammers. This is intended to be my unit building city in case of military need.

Berlin: Trying to use this as a culture center/commerce city.

Frankfurt: Placed to take over two cows and sheep.


Just some quick thoughts. Thanks!

 

[Skallagrimson]

What rules of thumb do you utilize when playing?

Some that I generally use are:

1) Slow or stop expansion when I am around 50% research rate. Building or conquering more cities at this point will ultimately slow my research rate.

Personally the only thing the slider tells me is if I'm close to a unit strike or not. If not: REX. If so.... hold back. Beakers can still come in via Scientist specialists, and eventually the growth of cottages will allow the slider to creep back up to >50% soon enough. Then it'll be time to expand again.

Every game where I've intentionally held back from expansion "worried about the slider" has been a mediocre game at best.

Every game where I've hit the rating of Nelson Mandela or higher, not just winning but completely owning, has been a result of REX, REX, and more REX. It's not a guarantee of huge success, but it's a factor, and a necessary one.

2) Keep cities at roughly +4 food per turn. More than this and you will be growing and increasing upkeep without increasing productivity. Less than this and the city is growing too slowly to be useful in the near future.

This completely depends on how big the city is. At smaller sizes you want a slower growth rate to bring in hammers and commerce, and growth thresholds are often just a few turns anyway--reaching the happy limit takes no time at all anyway, so, might as well try to grab something besides just food along the way.

At the mid-levels of size, if you're below the happy cap, punch it to the max food when you CAN grow, before it's time to stagnate or whip. This is the area where you'll see 20+ turns before the next level of growth, unless you work those pastured pig tiles, plantationed bananas, etc.

3) Halt city growth when I reach happyness cap. Run specialists or work production or commerce tiles instead of food.

Or whip.

4) Make sure cities I place have access to resources. Filler cities should only be built post 1000 AD.

I'm not a big believer in filler-cities. A few grass tiles and a hill are not enough reason for me to squeeze in an extra city, ever. Each location has to have its own justification for why you want to build there, and one more positive than just "filler", IMO. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you view REX strategies, there's usually a LOT of good city build locations, and on any given continent, one or two *outstanding* ones.

5) Never fear trading technologies with the AI.

6) Research techs that none of the AI's have, then trade this tech to get multiple techs you don't have.

I would abide by #5 only if #6 has been followed. And even then I make a few exceptions: if I have a key advantageous military tech like Military Tradition in Warlords, or I'm the only one with Assembly Line anywhere, and that's the only advantage I have, I'm not about to give that one away to anybody, not until I've used it to double the size of my empire militarily.

Civilian techs are okay to "pimp out" most of the time, for either tech tree backfill or diplomatic bonuses. But you also have to measure diplomatic hits you might get from tech trading. If Monty's got huge cavalry stacks right next door to your longbow-garrisoned cities, and his "worst enemy" wants to trade techs, I'd reconsider for that particular phase of the game. "Thanks but no thanks" might be the right answer, unless the tech to gain is one that adjusts the military balance.

These don't apply always, but you'll learn when to ignore your own rules as you get more experience.

 

[JujuLautre]

The explanationfor your city placement problem is simple : ressources can be used in two ways.

The first is to get them inside your cultural borders, which is what you did. Get it inside your borders, build a road if needed, build the improvement, and you get access to that ressource.
Having multiple access to the same ressource in this way can be usefull for three things:
- denying them to other civs
- trade them to other civs
- (BTS only) corporations

After this, you can also be WORKING the ressource. This means that the ressource must be inside your borders, have an improvement and... be into the big fat cross (BFC) of one of your city. This way, your city can work a (usually) very efficient tile: 6 food from pigs, lots of hammers from an iron or copper mine, 7 commerce from a gold mine etc...

This is an important aspect. Cities will flourish and grow even more if they can WORK powerfull ressources. And this is what the others posters talked about, because city placement is not really about having access to a ressource, but much more about being able to work them. So yes, some of your cities give access to ressources, but can't use them (like the rice, and others).

On an other aspect, Munich is very badly placed. Having a lot of hammer tiles is nice for a production city, but if you can't work them it's useless. And in your case, your city is at 4 population and already stopped to grow. Why? Because it has no food, which is critical for a production center (since hammer-rich tiles are usually food-low)

 

[OverclockN']

Thanks guys, I'm going to work this game through and see how it all goes. I'll post another save game file later on.

After this, I'll take what I learned and move the difficulty up a notch and try to make some changes.

 

[xanadux]

clock, if you still have the 4000BC initial save for this game, please post it and I will show you what you could have done with this start.

This is probably the best land I have ever seen to start a game.