Beginners Guide to the First 100 Moves

[King Pluto]

^^ Yeah, by early on I pretty much meant the first GS.

 

[rvalente74]

Got it!
Tks guys!

Another question: are there any pre-reqs for building Academies ?

 

[LeftAdjoint]

Civ4 Wiki. The answer seems to be no.

Still more video problems, and I actually had to scrap what I had done already as one part was corrupt.

I'll re-record at least the first hundred moves to give a sense of how my thought process works in the early game, though I'll probably have to split it into 15-minute chunks. (I have a YouTube account enabled for > 15 minutes but I'd rather not use it)

 

[LeftAdjoint]

If anybody would care to continue my education, I'm providing a new starting map for which I have completed 100 moves. I can't say I'm proud of my progress, despite trying to apply what I've read in this and other threads.

Since the focus of this thread is on getting a big lead in the early game, would you mind showing your progress every twenty moves or so? If you will justify your main strategies, that will also help. Remember, it may be obvious to you and to other folks who play as immortal deities and so forth, but it still seems like magic to me.

Good news! I finally got around all of my technical problems! Here's a video:

Monarch Tutorial

It's a little on the long side, and it gets a bit sloppy towards the end, but hey, this stuff is hard. Any feedback of any kind would be most welcome—I'd like to do more videos, hopefully ones that are as informative and/or entertaining as possible.

 

[jmrathbun]

Thanks for all your work on this! It looks like a wonderful resource.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

My first thought on the blocker city was to settle on the plains hill, as that would give the 2H city site bonus and let you immediately chop 2 forests into a monument to expand your borders to 2nd ring. The horse tile throws things around a bit, you'd need to break that forest in order to have any city that could work it. Grass horses are excellent tiles, and only a city where you marked it could have any chance of working it.

2nd thought, Monty is ~10 tiles away, you have horses at your capital, and you popped wheel from a hut? Ch-ch-ch-ch-chariot rush!

 

[jmrathbun]

It took me a while to get through your film series, Lefty, partly because of technical problems on my end and partly because there is so much interesting stuff in there. You have demonstrated many advanced tactics that players at my level need to master. I am not ready to endorse those tactics for beginners, however.

First, most beginners would have no clue how to use judgment the way you do. Beginners need some simple rules that will give them a chance to get into the middle game without being slaughtered by Montezuma. I would be terrified to neglect city defenses to the extent you did. Most beginners who try that will get wiped out.

Second, advanced tactics appear to be in the nature of exploits when compared to historical development of civilizations in the real world. You had gunpowder before the middle of the First Millennium A.D., for example, along with a whole lot of other anachronistic developments. To play this way, one must cast aside everything one knows about real life and pay a lot of attention to logical holes in the game's mechanics. From my point of view, that somewhat defeats all the work the developers invested in making things realistic. It's like finding A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court when you were looking for Le Morte d'Arthur.

So I will still defend some of my unpopular ideas as applied to beginners and what they need to know. For somebody playing at Prince who wants to win at Monarch, I think your ideas are quite valuable. It's a matter of having to crawl before you can learn to walk.

Thanks again for all your time on that project!

 

[LeftAdjoint]

The video was not intended to be a treatise of any kind, a rebuttal to your article, or a guide for beginners. My only intention was to try to present new ideas to someone playing, and trying to improve, at the Monarch level. If you wanted me to create a video guide for new players, why did you ask for advice with a game in the top half of the difficulties?

And if you wanted to see a specific kind of game, why did you not specify in your request?

Your points about beginners are mostly correct, but you're drawing bad conclusions from them. Yes, beginners need simple principles so that they don't get lost. Where we differ is that I believe that these principles, when given to beginners by someone claiming authority, should be correct. That way, if they choose to pursue the games at higher levels, they will not need to spend extra time eliminating all those false beliefs they've woven into their play. Like needing to follow historical timelines or else you're cheating.

It is better that a beginner should try advanced tactics, get wiped out, and learn from their mistakes. I'm not saying that's the only way to learn, but it's better than learning a bunch of wrong things.

Anyway, I'm kind of annoyed to be baited in such a matter but I won't worry about it too much. Thanks for watching, and I hope you get around to correcting some of the more flagrant mistakes in your article before you bump it again.

 

[jmrathbun]

No disrespect was intended. There are a lot of different ways to play this game. I'm trying to find a way for beginners to learn the game, and improve my own skills at the same time. Maybe that's too many objectives for a single thread.

 

[jammerculture]

The "anachronistic" nature of Leftadjoints game was a result of him playing at too low a level. It's not that he was cheating or using exploits, rather that he was playing the game to win at a higher level which means he destroyed the lower.

With that being said, this game will teach you nothing if you play at too low a level. If your goal really is to learn then it is better to lose playing the game properly at a higher level then win at a lower level and doing things integrally wrong like automating workers early, or building warrior first.

You might not "endorse" these tactics now, but keep in mind that these people that are telling you they are wrong are not only people that know how to play the game real well, but have also guided many many people like yourself through these exact same situations over the last five years or so. Seriously, if you counted the number of times voiceofunreason has explained worker first to new players you'd be astounded! The fact that you have these people in your thread trying to help you is not to be taken lightly.

with all that being said, I see in your responses to some of the games others have posted that part of your problem is that you don't really know what this game is capable of. If you really want to learn you should spend more time on this forum, reading the articles, following the games in the sample game directory and trying out the strategies presented. Don't play to win, play to learn! Then later winning will come so much easier.

 

[jmrathbun]

Lots of good help in this thread, and my play is improving as we go along. I agree with trying a variety of tactics in a given position to see what works. I decided to test the worker-first strategy in my current game on Monarch, vs the warrior-first build order I had originally endorsed. To my surprise, worker-first came out easily ahead on population growth: about 33% better! So we live and learn. I agree that moving up in difficulty shows you where your "good enough strategies" fall down. I'm also having good luck now with bee-lining and avoiding certain builds like walls. So thanks again for all the good help!