Biggest mistakes newbies make!

[Yared]

Hey what's wrong with that! That's where I am right now, although I did win my last game. Would learning the game be greatly improved on noble?

I must say many of your 21 points were applicable to me a few months ago.

From my end, one area that I focused on was to learn what each building or unit does and understand why I am using or building it.

I think (though I might be wrong) that he was referring to the big gap between Noble and Warlord. Many newbies complain about Noble being too hard and whatnot.

 

[yanner39]

Player has 6 city, no wonders, 20 prebuilt trebs ready for upgrade and is about to draft 25 rifles, killing his score even further.
Next to him is Ramesses with his 12 cities and 10 wonders, defended by 3 longbows each.

Guess who has the higher score. Now guess who's about to get wiped off the map.
Can't speak about deity, but this scenario is far from uncommon at immortal.

What is meant by "prebuilt" trebuchets?

 

[Yared]

What is meant by "prebuilt" trebuchets?

Trebs directly upgrade into Cannons and the upgrade is the cheapest one (AFAIK) in the game. As such, players often build Trebs (80 ) just before they get Steel. Cannons cost 100

So you basically get a "lot" of turns before to spam Trebs and then upgrade them into Cannons for a very cheap price.

 

[civvver]

Well not sure if all newbies make these mistakes, but the biggest mistakes I made when I was new:

1. Too many wonders. I came from civ2 where wonders were insanely powerful, but there's really only a couple super good ones in civ4 and even they depend on the map and are so expensive they can kill you going for them.

2. Founding religions. Religion was new so I thought these were super cool but really they just lead to diplomacy problems. Better to let one spread to you and have options than be the heathen.

3. Not enough units. I'd always try to get by with few really advanced units but with collateral damage that doesn't work so well in most cases. Plus power rating is good.

 

[Yared]

What is meant by "prebuilt" trebuchets?

A better explanation.

Trebs directly upgrade into Cannons and the upgrade is the cheapest one (AFAIK) in the game. As such, players often build Trebs (80 ) before they get the tech Steel and then upgrade them into Cannons.

Why?

There are 2 reasons why you'd wanna do this.

(1) - You're saving yourself aprox. 1 city/turn for every Treb - Trebs: 80 , Cannons 100 and the average "hammer" city pre-industrialization and without the H.Epic national wonder produces 20 per turn. Need I say more?

"Every hammer saved is a hammer earned" - some dude on CFC who calls himself Ramesses.

(2) - Because you have your Trebs pre-built and ready to be upgraded along with some drafted rifles, you can quickly overpower a Steel-deprieved civ.

Did I answer your question?

 

[Shafi]

when i first got civ IV, i looked at the difficulty levels and it said noble was balanced, i tried to play on noble and it was near impossible. i also had never played any of the civ series before.

I then slipped down to chieftain for a while, once i was little bit more confident moved to warlord struggled somewhat, stopped playing the game for almost 6 months then found this forum, started playing again whilst reading a lot on the forum, got much better at many aspects of the game.

Moved to Noble last month and i seem to be breezing through noble at the moment, contemplating moving a level up

So in summary i think for someone with no civ expirience, noble can be a bit too much and in my expirience nothing wrong in playing lower than noble whilst you learn the different aspects of the game.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

To me, the biggest mistake newbies make is not specializing their cities. I still struggle with that at times.

2nd is not using your traits effectively - even with the same start, you play differently with Elizabeth than you do as Asoka than you do as Genghis.

 

[cabert]

I think it's pretty easy to win on noble, once you know the basics.
What are the basics? (climbing difficulty)
- what is a tile? what are the improvements
- what is a city?
- what do those things do? (ie: hammers, commerce, gold, beakers, culture, espionage if you play BtS, Great Person Points)
- growth (how it works, managing health and happiness + giving food the priority as long as you can grow usefully)
- expansion (land is power, but overexpansion exists on noble, if you don't build enough cottages)
- trade(getting ripped off is not that bad)
- units (what are they good for : siege, melee, bows, mounted, ...) + promotions
- victory conditions (don't laugh, if you don't know what triggers a victory, you're not going to win very often)

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Starting to play at lower levels [bellow noble]. When they get used to having advantages and scream noble is so unfair...

Starting at lower levels and moving up is a good idea.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Starting at lower levels and moving up is a good idea.

I agree. It's not fun to get stomped all the time. I mean, I sometimes play Deity and get crushed whenever I do. If I were to play only on Deity, I'd find another game to play. There's nothing wrong with playing on settler if you're having fun.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

In direct opposition to some other posters here, let me say that founding an early religion and spreading it as much as possible can be very useful. If you manage to convert other civilizations, especially those nearby, you get allies, you can gang up on civs which are infidels, and don't forget the money if you manage to build the holy shrine. (Or two holy shrines, for that matter.) Absent religious wonders, the best way to get a holy shrine is to run as many priest specialists as possible in a Great Person city (one with lots of food) by building temples of different faiths and then wait for the city to give birth to a Great Prophet. I have often built Wall Street and Oxford University in a ciy with a religious shrine, and the money just rolls in. If somebody hates you as an infidel, well, that's why you build military units - to defend yourself or attack others.

Here's a mistake I made for a long time: I didn't think of gifting missionaries to civs running Theocracy. They will always try to establish the religion in one of their cities, all of them (this includes Isabella), because of the benefits from temples and monasteries.

Granted, this strategy (founding and spreading an early religion) may be less of a winner on higher difficulty levels; but this is a thread giving tips to newbies, not advice to people who plan to play on Immortal next time, right?

However, discussing religion leads me to another mistake: Thinking that sharing a religion affects all rival leaders equally. Some of them (Isabella or Pacal, for example) would never dream of attacking a brother in the faith. Most leaders would at least need a bit of provocation. (Note that having a weak army is a really big provocation with almost all of them.) Others (such as Shaka and Boudica and Catherine and Genghis Khan) attack brothers in the faith without turning a hair.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Missionaries are not free. Shrines are not free gold. They cost you a great person, and any GPT you get from the shrine has to be weighted against the hammer cost of the missionary.

Aside from the shrines, there is no advantage to running your own religion vs one the AI founds. You can still dogpile on infidels, build religious buildings, and use religious civics. The AIs build the missionaries for you, and if you pull a betrayal you might STILL get the shrine with far less investment.

None of that speaks to the delayed access to worker techs, bronze working, or writing, either. Early religion has a very real cost and frequently (not always, but often) it's so steep that other things give you better returns.

 

[whats a navy]

One of my biggest problems was adapting your game plan given your start.
After reading that great quecha rush guide in the War academy I decided to give it a go with HC. My start was as follows, 2 gold tiles, 1 corn, 1 pig, 1 stone all by a big fat juicy river. I of course don't stop to change anything and proceed to build my quechas only to have 40 turns go by and not meet anyone. I realised i was isolated 15 turns later. Having loads of quechas but no workers or settlers out I realised I was screwed. Tried to play it through but I got crushed anyways. Still in my opinion one of my best starts ever with HC being Fin and Ind I still regret it.

 

[none]

Postponing war waiting for that tech advantage when you could have wiped the enemy with your stacks before that.

 

[yanner39]

when i first got civ IV, i looked at the difficulty levels and it said noble was balanced, i tried to play on noble and it was near impossible. i also had never played any of the civ series before.

I then slipped down to chieftain for a while, once i was little bit more confident moved to warlord struggled somewhat, stopped playing the game for almost 6 months then found this forum, started playing again whilst reading a lot on the forum, got much better at many aspects of the game.

Moved to Noble last month and i seem to be breezing through noble at the moment, contemplating moving a level up

So in summary i think for someone with no civ expirience, noble can be a bit too much and in my expirience nothing wrong in playing lower than noble whilst you learn the different aspects of the game.

Thanks for this Shafi. I agree. I'm at Warlord level right now. I won my last Warlord game, but not by alot. I am playing another Warlord game to try and refine my style. I find myself significantly ahead in points but in my last game, I won the space race (built all the parts, launched in 1995, won by 2005) and Elizabeth was close second for a culture Victory.

At the time, I thought winning in 2005AD wasn't that great (but hey I won anyways right) and my normalized score of +$7K seemed to indicate this.

My point is, if I can't dominate more than that on Warlord, I won't survive Noble.

My biggest thing is early in the game, it seems I'm always dealt crap terrain(probably not true, just my impression). For example, in my current game, again as Hannibal, my capital was settled in place and for the first time, I have a nice GP Farm on my hands. However, the rest of the terrain is garbage. Tundra to the north and some desert tiles to the south. The only good thing is that I have access to Iron and Copper so right now, I plan on Axe Rushing William Orange to the south. However, I may be too late. I still have 2 more cities than him, but still.

Here is clear example where a more experienced player would like my starting position and take advantage of it.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I recently played a space race game. One of my cities had 12 workable tiles, with desert and being squeezed in between two other cities to take advantage of floodplains and gold. it still made well over 100 bpt for me at the end.

tundra isn't great, but if it's coastal, even ice can be a good city.

 

[cabert]

My point is, if I can't dominate more than that on Warlord, I won't survive Noble.

totally untrue
many things you do on a given level don't work on another level
For example, a very popular strat on higher levels is to tech to something the AIs don't have, for a large scale trading feast. This doesn't work on low levels because the AIs have nothing to trade.
I played a settler level game (for the HoF), and I teched almost every single tech myself.
I don't really remember, but at best I traded for 5 techs. On a monarch+ game, I "virtually" (it's not that simple) tech only 1 out of 3 techs.

OTOH, I have built all but 5 wonders (including corporation HQ and religious shrines) on this game. It just never happens on noble+.

My biggest thing is early in the game, it seems I'm always dealt crap terrain(probably not true, just my impression). For example, in my current game, again as Hannibal, my capital was settled in place and for the first time, I have a nice GP Farm on my hands. However, the rest of the terrain is garbage. Tundra to the north and some desert tiles to the south. The only good thing is that I have access to Iron and Copper so right now, I plan on Axe Rushing William Orange to the south. However, I may be too late. I still have 2 more cities than him, but still.

Here is clear example where a more experienced player would like my starting position and take advantage of it.

outside of the point that a clear advantage on warlord won't give you any significant experience on higher levels, in this situation, an experienced player would have recognized the classic "I'm in the north pole situation" and would have warrior rushed to the south before the closest AI comes to archery.

 

[yanner39]

totally untrue
many things you do on a given level don't work on another level
For example, a very popular strat on higher levels is to tech to something the AIs don't have, for a large scale trading feast. This doesn't work on low levels because the AIs have nothing to trade.
I played a settler level game (for the HoF), and I teched almost every single tech myself.
I don't really remember, but at best I traded for 5 techs. On a monarch+ game, I "virtually" (it's not that simple) tech only 1 out of 3 techs.

OTOH, I have built all but 5 wonders (including corporation HQ and religious shrines) on this game. It just never happens on noble+.

outside of the point that a clear advantage on warlord won't give you any significant experience on higher levels, in this situation, an experienced player would have recognized the classic "I'm in the north pole situation" and would have warrior rushed to the south before the closest AI comes to archery.

Thanks for this cabert. I was thinking of playing of couple of games on Noble and regardless of the outcome, I was going to stick to it until I win.

In terms of warrior rushing, that's a good point that was mentioned to me before.

 

[Psimon]

Well, I just made a noob mistake, heh. Trusting the Americans!

Playing the Romans (Noble), I sided with them against the Aztecs. This was very early in the game, I had just got Catapults. Trying the all-out aggressive strat again.

A no-brainer, I thought, Monty's always a PITA and he was looking dangerous with two big cities.

So I took him out, doing the Americans work for them, and also seriously weakened their other neighbor, the Greeks, by taking their capital. They only had one other city, a north-poler, and it was pathetic.

Now, I can't even develop the cities I took from Monty, as the American culture is overwhelming and trying to flip those border cities. The Americans have a HUGE army sitting in New York. They're about six techs ahead of me. They have four size 10 cities already, to my one (my capital). The rest of the world doesn't like me much, are in worse shape than I am (I've got about 6-7 cities, to their 2 or 3), and can't help.

So I pretty much handed the game victory to Roosevelt - who, as my "friend", is already demanding my one or two techs he doesn't have, and refuses to trade any of his in return.

I threw up my hands and accepted the inevitable. Next time I'll know better, you dirty yanks.

 

[cabert]

Thanks for this cabert. I was thinking of playing of couple of games on Noble and regardless of the outcome, I was going to stick to it until I win.

In terms of warrior rushing, that's a good point that was mentioned to me before.

I quickly played a normal speed, noble start with ragnar (for another thread), and I warrior rushed the ottoman.
4 warriors vs an archer and a warrior.
2 warriors died to the archer.
1 warrior died to the warrior.
the 4th killed the archer.
on the next turn, "archer killer" got promoted with shock, 87% against the lone injured warrior.
He made it. So I had given myself another capital + a worker + a warrior defending there for the price of 4 warriors (no barracks, because you want to be fast).
I had built a worker before the warriors and it almost cost me the second capital. For a safe play, I should have built 4 warriors straight away.