Can't win on Chieftain

[CedricTheAwesom]

Apparently I'm a total fail at Civ. I played on "Settler" difficulty and won a game pretty easily, but when I started playing on "Chieftain" (which is only the next one up) I did REALLY BAD point-wise. I had like five other civs and was last or second to last in points for the entire game, and I was like, WHY??? I was the most advanced civilization, though I only had a few cities, and I lost a war early on, but really. Then I played another game on a big map, as the French, and I'm doing better, there are 9 civs and I'm like fourth or fifth worst. I'm at around 1850 and researching Steam Power, just made peace with Charlemagne (he demanded tribute, but I refused and beat his obsolete army of Knights and pikemen with my unique French units), I'm not really good at war but I only have four cities and zero room to expand, so I'm thinking about taking one of his cities. Any thoughts??

 

[ikotomi]

The game is probably salvageable, as long as you choose your victory condition and focus on it. Conquest or domination is probably well within reach if you crank out a ton of units. Space may be difficult unless you bring the tech leaders down a bit.

That being said, Steam Power is quite late and you usually want to have pulled ahead a lot more by this point in time. The early turns are the most important, and improving on the first 100 turns or so should really be your focus.

 

[Pangaea]

First my first thought: "Wow, this is possible?"

However, when reading your post, a big issue is that you only have 4 cities in 1850AD. On normal speed this is something you should have by around 2000BC, or at least three cities by then. Important early game priorities is to build a worker (almost always do this as your first build in a city), improve the food, EXPAND. On Chieftain level you have looooooooooooooooots of time to do this before the AI does, so you must have been incredibly slow in this game.

Don't build all the buildings in the list, this is a typical mistake, but many of them aren't really worth building, especially early on.

This is a pretty common way to play the early game.

1. Build worker
2. (Simultaneously) Research the worker tech you need to improve food in your capital (unless you start with it). Typically Farming, Fishing or Animal Husbandry.
3. When the worker is out, improve your food
4. Build warriors until the capital hits size 3.
5. Start a settler.
6. Start another settler
7. Found two cities in good locations, that grabs food (Food is King) and maybe a strategic resource like Horses or Copper, if it's located nearby.

This should get you 3 cities by ~2000BC. Keep building some warriors and workers and settlers in this very early game. Unless you're going to rush (wage war on an AI very early), you need to grab land by expanding. Try to get at least 6 cities by 1AD, but aim for 10.

Points don't matter much btw. More important to develop your cities and empire, so just ignore the scoreboard for now, especially in the early game. It's largely population that matters, and since the AI will grow faster in the early game because you do smarter things, such as building workers and settlers (you can't grow while you do this), you will have fewer points. Doesn't matter. Civ4 is a marathon, not a sprint

 

[Jivilov]

Greetings Cedric! Check out some Civ4 videos on Youtube. That might be more enlightening than plowing through a score of strategy guides (although they can be very helpful at times). One of my faves is Sullla's Dutch Let's Play video, which shows you how important food, slavery, workers and research are to being competitive.

It doesn't deal with tech trading or going for domination, so you probably want to check out some others. Cheers and good luck!

 

[Bjarkov]

the key to succes is expanding at the right pace. Expand too slowly and you will fall behind later in the game due to not having enough land. Expand too quickly and you will stagnate in maintenance costs that eats away your ressources.

4 cities by 18xx AD is definitely not fast enough. A healthy rate for beginners would be to get to 4 cities before 1000 BC.

You've probably focused on the wrong features. In the beginning of the game, the only military you need are a few explorer units and one unit in each city. You don't need any city improvements, so skip those Monuments, Walls, Libraries, Temples etc until you feel more in control of the initial game stage.

What SHOULD you focus on in the initial game stages?
You need food to grow your cities. You need Workers to develop your food sources. You need Settlers to grab more land for more ressources. You might need fishing boats to develop seafood. Research should be directed towards technology that lets you improve available food sources (Agriculture for cereals, Animal Husbandry for animals, Fishing for seafood).
Conveniently, Workers and Settlers get bonus production from your surplus food, so having more food means even less time for worker and settler production.

After the initial expansion to 4-5 cities you'll want to focus on Commerce. Commerce pays your maintenance costs and fuels your research, it helps you improve your economy further and allows you to get even more land for more food, production and Commerce, and so the cycle goes.

You can pick one of the Creative leaders until you learn more about city placement. Creative leaders get free border pops which makes city placement MUCH more forgiving. If not playing the creative trait, make sure you settle your cities so that the ressource you want is adjacent to the city. This lets you exploit the ressource from the start instead of having to wait for 1) a culture city improvement and 2) enough culture to expand the border

Focus on these things and you'll find yourself in a much better position to take over the game at a later stage. Chieftain is low enough difficulty to be beatable with 'only' sensible habits of play

 

[Ringo Kid]

My advice; KILL KILL KILL war early and often. Whenever you learn a new weapon/unit tech attack a few more cities with them.

 

[CedricTheAwesom]

Wow, that's totally counterintuitive. Probably a good strategy, but the opposite of what I did. I was building city improvement and focusing not on food, but gold. Thanks for the advice, tho. I played the game a little more and now I'm at 1927-ish and fighting a war against Charlemagne to do a land grab, but I severely underestimated his advancement and fighting strength and not sure if I can win. Could I get some help?

 

[Gumbolt]

Wow, that's totally counterintuitive. Probably a good strategy, but the opposite of what I did. I was building city improvement and focusing not on food, but gold. Thanks for the advice, tho. I played the game a little more and now I'm at 1927-ish and fighting a war against Charlemagne to do a land grab, but I severely underestimated his advancement and fighting strength and not sure if I can win. Could I get some help?

Game should of been over long before 1927. Especially on Chieftan level. I have no idea why you stopped at 4 cities come 1850ad. I suspect this is because on this level the AI are really slow out of the block. In fact most things are in the humans advantage at this level. On average game you need to have at least 6-7 cities by 1ad and a strategy to win soon after.

Not sure why you feel the need for a similar thread on the civ 4 general discussion page. News flash for you. 15 strong stack at 1920ad is small. Start a new game and get the basics right. More than 4 cities would be a good starter.

 

[Seraiel]

FYI:

15 units is not a "big stack" , 100+ units is a big stack.

I agree with Gumbolt that you should start a new game, post it here in the forums, post screenshots too, play small turnsets and wait for advice before you continue with playing. Play a 2nd game simultaniously, if waiting for advice takes too long. In this forum, we usually win between 1000 and 1500 AD on the highest possible difficulty (Deity) . There's a lot where you can improve your game, and the people here are very friendly and helpful, you should take advantage of that.