Civ IV - Winning Emperor on Marathon

[sonicboom12345]

I generally consider myself to be a pretty good Civ IV player. Not good enough to win on the highest difficulties, but good enough to have an understanding of game mechanics; good enough that I can win on Monarch without save-scumming a good percent of the time.

The settings I usually play on are:

Huge world
Four continents
Marathon speed
Max AI
Vassal states on
No espionage

Recently, I decided to bump the difficulty up to Emperor. I'm floored by the change in difficulty. I've played perhaps fifteen games, and not a single time have I come out on top. In general, I find I can fight my way through the early game pretty easily, even establish myself as the dominant empire on my continent. But invariably, the midgame creeps up, and I'm paid a visit by some other country from far-away land -- usually Catherine -- who shows up with eight galleons and eight caravels, loaded with troops.

And I'm not sure how to overcome it. I seem to be floundering on all fronts. I'll try to enumerate the problems I usually encounter:

- Constantly behind in the tech race. As I understand it, this is pretty par for the course at the higher difficulties, but no matter how I try, I just can't scrabble my way to the top of the pack. In my current game, as I'm facing down this Russian doom armada, it's 1380AD, turn 585, and I'm bringing in 609 total commerce from my 24 cities. And even though that's more cities than any of the AI have, by a good number, it's still only enough to net me 9th for GNP.

- Never a navy. I don't know how to go about building one, really. Good sites for coastal production cities are rare, and in the early game, it never seems like there's enough time to build ships when you're so focused on the land grab, holding back the barbs, cranking out workers, early warring, holding off Shaka on one side and Isabella on the other. Coastal resources seem so utterly, pointless undefendable to me, I usually don't get around to improving them for ages; why waste the shields on a workboat when the barbs are just going to roll in, miraculously kill the Combat 1 galley you've sat on top of the resource, and pillage all your hard work? And it's all but impossible to go on the offensive against them, due to the natural defensive bonuses they reap simply from being defenders on a coastal square. The upshot is that by the time fleets of white sails start appearing on the horizon, I've got two or three galleys and triremes, at best. Hopelessly outnumbered, and hopelessly out-teched.

- Never an army. Or at least, not enough of one. 11th in soldiers now, with 2 axes, 6 maces, 2 spears, 6 pikes, 16 archers, 20 longbows, 1 crossbow, 6 Immortals, 1 trireme, 5 trebuchets, 1 galley, and 12 workers. That's all I've managed to build and hold onto after completing my conquest of Inca (and nabbing their holy city), and alternately holding off Shaka and Isabella -- who never freaking gets up to friendly, incidentally, despite being at +10. My military's in the range of .6 to .7 against most of the other powerful AI; 1.3 to 1.7, against the weaker ones; but against Catherine, who's a juggernaut in every. single. game, I can't creep past .3. Right around 1AD, she takes off like a rocket and never looks back. On top of that, factor in her propensity for capitulating her neighbors, and I haven't got a chance -- even if I do make it to modern times, inevitably, it gets to the point where she's just roaming around with her arms, vassalizing the whole world, and there's nothing I can do but sit and wait my turn.

I don't really know how to improve my game any. It seems I'm deficient in every area, and no matter what I do, any change will come at the expense of something else. Build a bigger military, and I won't have the libraries for research, much less the markets and courthouses to pay for that military. Try to go for more research, and I'm sunk whenever an invading army shows up.

Can anyone offer any tips? I'm busted. Maybe there's some key, fundamental strategy I've overlooked -- maybe I need to run more specialists, go for the GP farm earlier, change my research priorities, I don't know.

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

I generally consider myself to be a pretty good Civ IV player. Not good enough to win on the highest difficulties, but good enough to have an understanding of game mechanics; good enough that I can win on Monarch without save-scumming a good percent of the time.

Save-scumming can be a valuable learning tool. It allows you to see what went wrong, what could have stopped it, etc.. I understand the appeal of one-taking it, but when you are trying to improve to a higher level, don't be embarrassed to reload once something goes horribly awry.

The settings I usually play on are:

Huge world
Four continents
Marathon speed
Max AI
Vassal states on
No espionage

Those are some peculiar settings. If you find this to be the most fun, definitely go for it, but many consider pangea, no huts, no events, normal speed, the 'standard'. The game seems to be balanced around normal speed, so other speeds can lead to some peculiarities.
Some of your problems are enhanced by your settings. Less watery maps have less problems with rogue galleys or spare you the trouble of building ships, for example. You also have more control over your opponents and the tech race if you actually meet all your opponents before optics.

Recently, I decided to bump the difficulty up to Emperor. I'm floored by the change in difficulty. I've played perhaps fifteen games, and not a single time have I come out on top. In general, I find I can fight my way through the early game pretty easily, even establish myself as the dominant empire on my continent. But invariably, the midgame creeps up, and I'm paid a visit by some other country from far-away land -- usually Catherine -- who shows up with eight galleons and eight caravels, loaded with troops.

Early fighting can set you behind in terms of techs: you spend production on war units and have less trading partners. Even your defeated foes have less techs to give you, since they had to fight you. Generally, the extra land should make up for it in the long run, however. Once you get your infrastructure back on line, more cities should outproduce and outtech an opponent with less cities.
Catherine is a special case, since she is most like a non-AI player. She'll trade willingly but also backstab you willingly. Anyway, 8 galleons are 24 troops, caravels do not carry anything. That should be beatable with the resources of an entire continent.

And I'm not sure how to overcome it. I seem to be floundering on all fronts. I'll try to enumerate the problems I usually encounter:

- Constantly behind in the tech race. As I understand it, this is pretty par for the course at the higher difficulties, but no matter how I try, I just can't scrabble my way to the top of the pack. In my current game, as I'm facing down this Russian doom armada, it's 1380AD, turn 585, and I'm bringing in 609 total commerce from my 24 cities. And even though that's more cities than any of the AI have, by a good number, it's still only enough to net me 9th for GNP.

Not really no, not at Emperor. At Emperor, getting ahead in the tech race is definitely doable, pretty comfortably. I played at Emperor not too long ago and invariably was in the lead for large portion of the games I didn't try to immortal rush or something.
In the early game, a large number of cities tend to weigh you down in terms of research: maintenance cost increase not only with distance, but also with number of cities. As you get more techs that improve the efficiency of your tiles and cities and build some courthouses and a well placed FP, this starts to change.
Think about a city with one domestic trade route working a cottage tile (among others). That cottage gets 2 commerce and the city 1: 3 total. Later, once you have foreign trade routes and currency and worked the tile for a bit, this city and this tile will give you 2+2 +3 = 7. After you have Astronomy and Corporations and a town, this will be something like 5+6+7 +6 (or something)= 24.
What this means for early conquests is that players have a choice: count on my current techs being enough to carry the game to victory, or stop warring and expanding and improve your infrastructure to catch up in tech. Since you play on huge maps with different continents, the second is your only option. If you are catching up in tech, try to get something no known civ already has. If you can get one tech you can trade, you can catch up a lot: do not go for guilds that everyone has, but eek out education with a scientist bulb, and then trade for guilds+some gold, engineering+ some gold and compass+music, that kind of stuff.
Another option is to forgo early conquest and develop the things that make a large empire sustainable first, then go to war. Only start fighting once you have quirassiers after winning a lib race is a common tactic.

- Never a navy. I don't know how to go about building one, really. Good sites for coastal production cities are rare, and in the early game, it never seems like there's enough time to build ships when you're so focused on the land grab, holding back the barbs, cranking out workers, early warring, holding off Shaka on one side and Isabella on the other.

Couple of points:
1. You do not need a navy, until you plan to invade another continent. Maybe, maybe a navy when you find out someone is going to invade you and you want to sink their stack of ships before the get to land. A standing navy without a real, relatively short term goal isn't really a thing your should aim for. More on this later.
2. You do not need production to build a navy. You mention 24 cities. Lets say 9 of those are coastal. Put a galleon in each of them. Wait a turn. Whip the galleons. There, you have 9 galleons, enough for 27 troops.
3. So essentially, you are right not to build a navy early on. Having boats sitting around without a clear purpose is a waste of hammers and maintenance.

Coastal resources seem so utterly, pointless undefendable to me, I usually don't get around to improving them for ages; why waste the shields on a workboat when the barbs are just going to roll in, miraculously kill the Combat 1 galley you've sat on top of the resource, and pillage all your hard work? And it's all but impossible to go on the offensive against them, due to the natural defensive bonuses they reap simply from being defenders on a coastal square.

Another couple of points.
1. Food is king. Not improving fish tiles is not good gameplay. It is naughty. Moreover, with whipping, workboats repay themselves very, very fast.
2. Barbarian galleys are annoying, indeed. However, fogbusting works against them as well. If most of the continent is settled or fogbusted, that are areas they cannot spawn. If there are some islands of the coast where they could spawn you can either settle them or put a trireme in there somewhere. He will bust a lot of the fog as well as eat up any galleys that do happen to spawn at the edges.
3. Being unlucky sucks, but over 15 games you cannot have gotten systematically unlucky in all your galley encounters. Anyway, triremes are excellent against galleys, you do not need to guard each individual fish tile, you need to stop them from getting into your coastline from wherever they can spawn. If your coastline is the west coast of the USA, to use real world example and Canada and Mexico are unsettled, you do not need galleys in Portland or San Fran etc, you need to put a trireme in Seattle and one in LA, or fogbust around Vancouver and Alaska and across the border into Mexico with some land troops.

The upshot is that by the time fleets of white sails start appearing on the horizon, I've got two or three galleys and triremes, at best. Hopelessly outnumbered, and hopelessly out-teched.

Yeah, like I said, that is fine. Having a standing navy in order to stop invasions is not very efficient. The way to deal with foreign invaders from over sea is:
1. Not be a target. Use diplomacy to stop people from attacking you. This is by far the most efficient way. Catherine is notoriously fickle, however, I give you that.
2. Be ahead or equal in tech and whip a navy of frigates to sink the expedition force.
3. Just take it. Whip an army and/or use whatever leftover troops you have to destroy their land army. The ships might ravage your shore line, but at Astronomy time late in the game, that isn't that big a deal anymore.

- Never an army. Or at least, not enough of one. 11th in soldiers now, with 2 axes, 6 maces, 2 spears, 6 pikes, 16 archers, 20 longbows, 1 crossbow, 6 Immortals, 1 trireme, 5 trebuchets, 1 galley, and 12 workers. That's all I've managed to build and hold onto after completing my conquest of Inca (and nabbing their holy city), and alternately holding off Shaka and Isabella -- who never freaking gets up to friendly, incidentally, despite being at +10. My military's in the range of .6 to .7 against most of the other powerful AI; 1.3 to 1.7, against the weaker ones; but against Catherine, who's a juggernaut in every. single. game, I can't creep past .3. Right around 1AD, she takes off like a rocket and never looks back. On top of that, factor in her propensity for capitulating her neighbors, and I haven't got a chance -- even if I do make it to modern times, inevitably, it gets to the point where she's just roaming around with her arms, vassalizing the whole world, and there's nothing I can do but sit and wait my turn.

Armies have the same rules as ships: use them or don't build them. If you are going to build an army, use it. You are spending hammers on units, which cost maintenance afterwards. If you do not use these productively, you have wasted these. Standing armies are a thing of reality, they are not an efficient thing in the civ 4.
Use diplomacy to keep enemies of your back is key. But if you do get the wrath of an enemy upon you, there are signs that this is going to happen. In many mods a red fist appears when someone is plotting war, but you can also keep track of their stacks of troops. Generally, you have enough time to whip together a defensive force.
Power ratings aren't that important. If you aren't planning a war in the immediate future, having a low one is fine. Once you hit a key military tech, you can start whipping and building an army, double time. Especially if you already control your continent, the relative power is less important, since the AI isn't very good at projecting his power in naval warfare and the odds of being truly overwhelmed are lower.

I don't really know how to improve my game any. It seems I'm deficient in every area, and no matter what I do, any change will come at the expense of something else. Build a bigger military, and I won't have the libraries for research, much less the markets and courthouses to pay for that military. Try to go for more research, and I'm sunk whenever an invading army shows up.

Can anyone offer any tips? I'm busted. Maybe there's some key, fundamental strategy I've overlooked -- maybe I need to run more specialists, go for the GP farm earlier, change my research priorities, I don't know.

As a general rule, you seem to be wanting to do to many different things at the same time. Building infrastructure, fighting wars, maintaining a navy. Where civ 4 differs from reality is that you can have effective dramatic switches in your game: once you get a key tech you can just build an army in a 10 turns by whipping your cities a lot, getting a force of lets say 30 cuirassiers, despite always having been the weakest player previously, with just 7 warriors, 4 archers and 2 axes as city garrisons/fog busters.
Once you conquer a foe and decide that the time for war is now over, you can stop producing war units and start building courthouses, libraries, forges, granaries in conquered cities (markets are generally inefficient in most cities), wealth, failgolding wonders, etc.., and climb back up in techs.


Hope this helps somewhat.

 

[Seraiel]

- Constantly behind in the tech race. As I understand it, this is pretty par for the course at the higher difficulties, but no matter how I try, I just can't scrabble my way to the top of the pack. In my current game, as I'm facing down this Russian doom armada, it's 1380AD, turn 585, and I'm bringing in 609 total commerce from my 24 cities. And even though that's more cities than any of the AI have, by a good number, it's still only enough to net me 9th for GNP.

The way to stay in the tech-race on the higher difficulties definitely is tech-trading. The problem I'm able to identify from your numbers however is completely different. 609 total from 24 cities imo. tells, that you have no idea of how to build up an economy. I'd heavily recommend you to read the guide called "CIV Illustrated #4: Hybrid Economy!" (see signature) , to inform yourself on the economical options of CIV. A very common tactic is to completely cottage the capital (except the Hills, on those build Mines first if you need them and transform them to Windmills later) , hire some Scientists either in the capital, if it has a lot or in a different city to generate a Great Scientist, found an Academy in the capital with him and run Burocracy. Burocracy gives you +50% on and on , so if you conduct 100 base- (possible without problems when building really many Cottages) , you then conduct 150 base . Those 150 could get multiplied by i. e. a Library, the Academy (+75%, then those are already 250+ ) , and should you go for Space, then you'll also want to build a University, Oxford and a Laboratory (bringing you up to +225% research = roughly 500 / turn) .

You can read more about city-specialization in CIV Illustrated #3. It has very good screenshots which you can take as examples for which improvements to build in which city. I guess you either use automated Workers (very bad) or simply don't know which improvements do what, those both guides explain that theoretically and practically to you .

- Never a navy. I don't know how to go about building one, really. Good sites for coastal production cities are rare, and in the early game, it never seems like there's enough time to build ships when you're so focused on the land grab, holding back the barbs, cranking out workers, early warring, holding off Shaka on one side and Isabella on the other. Coastal resources seem so utterly, pointless undefendable to me, I usually don't get around to improving them for ages; why waste the shields on a workboat when the barbs are just going to roll in, miraculously kill the Combat 1 galley you've sat on top of the resource, and pillage all your hard work? And it's all but impossible to go on the offensive against them, due to the natural defensive bonuses they reap simply from being defenders on a coastal square. The upshot is that by the time fleets of white sails start appearing on the horizon, I've got two or three galleys and triremes, at best. Hopelessly outnumbered, and hopelessly out-teched.

Against Barb-Galleys, you definitely always either want 2 Galleys or a Trireme on top of a resource, so it cannot get pillaged. You should definitely improve your seafood, as it is easily strong enough to produce those ships and a lot more if having a Granary and if whipping. Neglecting the Navy mostly for most time of the game is totally ok, you only need a real Navy once you invade the overseas civilizations, but you should have enough defensive ships on your resources to prevent pillaging. You don't have too worry too much about AI making a naval invasion, AI is basically not capable of that, though it sometimes does happen (probably simply by chance) . AI will often invade your borders with some Ships though, and sinking them or at least defending the resources is a must. I know that it's hard to spare the resources on that, so I'd beg you to pay attention on what I wrote, "Granary + whip" . A Granary doubles the you get and from 2 population, you can almost produce 2 full Galleys or Triremes. Getting a coastal city to size 4, if it has seafood and a Granary should be very easy for you. Try to fasten up the process by chopping out the WB and the Granary if possible.

- Never an army. Or at least, not enough of one. 11th in soldiers now, with 2 axes, 6 maces, 2 spears, 6 pikes, 16 archers, 20 longbows, 1 crossbow, 6 Immortals, 1 trireme, 5 trebuchets, 1 galley, and 12 workers. That's all I've managed to build and hold onto after completing my conquest of Inca (and nabbing their holy city), and alternately holding off Shaka and Isabella -- who never freaking gets up to friendly, incidentally, despite being at +10. My military's in the range of .6 to .7 against most of the other powerful AI; 1.3 to 1.7, against the weaker ones; but against Catherine, who's a juggernaut in every. single. game, I can't creep past .3. Right around 1AD, she takes off like a rocket and never looks back. On top of that, factor in her propensity for capitulating her neighbors, and I haven't got a chance -- even if I do make it to modern times, inevitably, it gets to the point where she's just roaming around with her arms, vassalizing the whole world, and there's nothing I can do but sit and wait my turn.

Again, the numbers show a real problem in prioritization. With 24 cities, you need at least 16 Workers (24 * 2/3) . That is the case if you're ultra advanced though, have an awesome Worker management and play for Dom- / Conquest so whip your cities very often. If you play for Space or simply require more research, so your cities need to be bigger, you need 25 Workers (24 = 1 for each city + 1 extra for the capital) . As you're probably still a beginner in Worker management, try with 1.2 Workers / city or as high as up to 1.5 Workers / city (the last is a little too much, but having too much Workers is way better than having too few) .

Then you also build way too many defensive units like Archers and Longbows. On the higher difficulties, you need to focus on your offensive force. Only cities that need a garrison for happiness should have one, and it should be a Warrior or Archer. Longbows are already very expensive and only needed if you really need to defend a city because it gets attacked, that simply should not happen though or at least should not happen without you being prepared for it. Most AIs cannot declare war when they're pleased or above. The aggressive AIs like Shaka would need to be friendly, that's difficult but also possible if having good diplo, just think that peace is +1, open borders are +2, resource trade can also be up to +2 and if gifting techs, you can get another +4 = +9 = Shaka friendly. Even if he's only pleased though, the chances that he'll declare war massively sink, I think especially those of Shaka are extremely low when pleased or above, he's mostly dangerous on cautious or lower. In most cases though, you'll see a red-fist icon besides the name on the scoreboard, at least if you have the BUG mod, if you don't, you either should install it, or you'll need to check diplomacy often and see if the AI responds with "We have enough on our hands right now" (WHEOOHRN) . This is the info for you, tha AI is plotting a war, then, you maybe need to prepare a defense if your relations aren't good and especially if you share borders, but ideal case, you don't build that defense! You invest only so many into a Wall, that you can still 2-pop-whip it, should the AI come, you 2-pop-whip it and produce another defender with the OF, then you already have 2 defenders. Scout the AI, see if its stack is moving, if it moves in your direction, gather your forces from the other cities and whip all your cities for additional units so you instantly have a strong defensive force. If you invested 1 in all of your cities into 1 unit, you can easily have 48 ancient units from 24 cities by 2-pop-whips, because 1 unit costs about 1 population, but if you have slightly less than 1 population gives, you need 2 population and the from the 2nd point go into the next unit, so like this, you get 2 units easily. If this is too difficult, whip 2 times, but remember to only invest 1T of production in units in your cities in case you see an AI plot war and think it might be against you, and you whip them if you know it really goes against you. Worst case, you lose 1 border-city, that's no big deal, I often lose 1 city because it's not defended well enough or even has 0 defenders to the AI, better, than to invest xxxx on a defensive force. Build an offensive one to have the power to conquer the AI, keep peace via diplo if possible and only produce a defensive force if it's really needed. You can easily re-take the conquered city if you have a strong offensive force aswell.

Hth. You can learn very much, if you post a game, post screenshots and let others give advice, but these are very specific answers towards your biggest problems.

 

[sonicboom12345]

Is the salient point that I should be whipping more?

My general strategy is to keep a few production cities and use them to churn out units near-constantly. From time to time, I'll rotate one of them out in order to build a forge, a factory, or a grocer, as needed. They're usually the only cities where I build barracks.

Just plain whipping a unit in every city in order to build an army seems intuitively sub-optimal to me, as the majority of the units would be unpromoted -- unless you also whip barracks in your cities first? Do you generally keep a barracks in every city in case the need to one-turn a lot of units should arise?

Another thing I'm not clear on. Upgrades. Do you just disband the old units? Set your tech to 0 for five turns and accumulate the cash to mass-upgrade them? Only upgrade the promoted ones, disband the ones that aren't experienced, and whip the rest?

Research priorities. There are certain techs I almost never go for until it's very late. Meditation and polytheism, I usually hold off on for a good long while. Horseback riding. Compass and Optics. Literature, Drama, and Music. Divine Right and Theology. They just never seem to be a priority, because there's always something more important to go for -- Code of Laws for courthouses, Feudalism for bows, Engineering for trebs, Civil Service for irrigation spread and Paper and Liberalism. Am I doing wrong by neglecting these?

 

[obsolete]

Marathon speed

You say you are not save-scumming... but you're still speed-cheating...

good enough that I can win on Monarch

Umm, no.

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[sonicboom12345]

I guess you either use automated Workers (very bad) or simply don't know which improvements do what

As you're probably still a beginner in Worker management, try with 1.2 Workers / city or as high as up to 1.5 Workers / city (the last is a little too much, but having too much Workers is way better than having too few) .

No offense, and I thank you for your post, but I feel a little put-out reading presumptions like this simply because I'm not aware of/don't adhere to a hard-and-fast rule on how many units I should have, and am short by four.

You say you are not save-scumming... but you're still speed-cheating...

Umm, no.

...Make that double-insulted.

Is there any reason to be rude?

 

[Seraiel]

No offense, and I thank you for your post, but I feel a little insulted reading presumptions like this simply because I'm not aware of/don't adhere to a hard-and-fast rule on how many units I should have, and am short by four.

I didn't want to insult you. Not hard and fast-ruling Workers ofc. is even better, but you need to be very pro to really know which number of Workers you need, and having 12 shows, that you aren't aware. For you, it are 4 too few, but I mentioned 16 as the absolute minimum and mentioned other numbers like 20+. Even if you'd have extremely well Worker management, 12 Workers are at least 25% too few. 25% is a lot. You should really see, that you aren't working any unimproved tiles except for the beginning phase of the game or when you really know what you're doing, like working 1 unimproved Grassland Forest, because it gives you an extra via OR or a Forge, is 2 .

Please read the whole post, I invested a lot of work in it, and I wouldn't have done that only to insult you. I only invest work when I see that someone needs help or when someone is a friend of mine.

And yes, you need to use the whip a lot more. Whipping is the single most powerful thing in whole CIV. With a Granary, 1 can be as much as 3 . Small cities can be very powerful, they only cause little maintenance and still have almost full value TRs and when working only the 4-8 best tiles and whipping, they're unbeatably efficient.

But plz, really, invest the time and re-read the whole post slowly and also those guides. Only from the time in which you read and replied towards our posts and from seeing how short your reply is I know, that you missed out a lot of important information that took at least 30 minutes to write, you should invest at least the same time in trying to understand it and in reading the 2 guides I mentioned.

 

[sonicboom12345]

But plz, really, invest the time and re-read the whole post slowly and also those guides. Only from the time in which you read and replied towards our posts and from seeing how short your reply is I know, that you missed out a lot of important information that took at least 30 minutes to write, you should invest at least the same time in trying to understand it and in reading the 2 guides I mentioned.

I have read it, and I thank you.

From what I understand, the root of my problems may be this: my capital is almost never a commerce city. Its role varies depending on the game, but in general, I tend to make it a GP farm if it's flush with food, or a production city if it has hills and grassland river tiles. Due to the way that Bureaucracy works, that means I'm short-changing myself.

In my current game, it isn't working a single cottage, as my thinking at the start was, "This city is surrounded by irrigable grasslands and flood plains, and it has three clams. I should make it a GP farm." Therefore I gave it farms and no cottages, and left it to work the coast and two gems/hills for commerce. What I should have done was have it working cottages all game long. Instead it's only bringing in 45 gold and 45 science at 50% and pop 12 with a granary, lighthouse, forge, monument, library, market, temple, monastery.

I will start over my current game and try again keeping some of the points that you and others have brought up in mind. Thank you!

 

[Seraiel]

@ sonicboom12345:

Use your Capital for both in such cases. Capitals often have enough to run 2 Scientists from a Library and grow and develop infrastructure and thereby producing the 1st GS aswell as transforming into a very good Buro capital. GP-Farm capital is only for very short games, in long games like with your settings, the GP-Farm needs to be in a different city, otherwise you'll need to move the Palace, and that sucks, I once did that though. If possible, your capital should always be a Buro-capital similar to how I specified it .

Other points will show when you post game updates, best really, post savegames, post screenshots and wait for advice. Play a 2nd game simultaniously so you don't get bored waiting 1-2d for advice.

 

[sonicboom12345]

Of course, here it is. Feel free to clue me in on my mistakes.

 

[obsolete]

Is there any reason to be rude?

You can be offended as much as you want, but that will not change the facts that people have been giving you.

 

[sonicboom12345]

You can be offended as much as you want, but that will not change the facts that people have been giving you.

You did not provide any facts. You only needlessly insulted.

Kindly leave the topic if you are not going to be helpful.

 

[Seraiel]

Of course, here it is. Feel free to clue me in on my mistakes.

Plz post screenshots if you want me to comment. I don't have BUG / BULL imstalled but BUFFY because I play HoF / GOTM. Also, post a little about what you think and what your plans are. Begin with things like where to place the 2nd or 3rd city and before that, which units to buld in which order (tip Worker, Warriors 'til size 3, WBs instead of Warriors if coastal start but you imo. shouldn't play a coastal start to learn because they're far more difficult because WBs cost a fixed price and don't multiply their usefulness through time like Workers do. At size 3, 1st Settler, after that either 2nd Settler directly or 2nd Worker or grow to all good tiles via Warriors / Barracks / Library again. When working all good tiles, 2nd Settler at latest. If you play like me, you found 4-5 cities and manage them with only the initial Worker by only improving 2-3 tiles / city and then moving towards the next with the Worker. Once you're at 4-5 cities, you really need to build at least 3 additional Workers so you got 4 before you REX to 6+ cities, also because you should have Alpha and all basic-techs then, unlocking a lot more improvements for you.
Tell which path of research you want to take ) .

 

[sonicboom12345]

Okay. I don't think my early game is really that shaky, but I will post a screen.

Spoiler :

I don't start with Mining, so my research order is Mining->Bronze Working to enable chopping. From there, Mysticism, then Animal Husbandry to reveal horses.

My build order is pretty consistent from game to game. In this game, as in most, Warrior first to pad out the time while I'm busy researching Mining. Then, Worker-Worker-Settler. The first Worker will farm the flood plains, then move south around the coast to start to mine one of the gems. The second Worker is produced just as Bronze Working hits, and immediately starts to chop the Settler. The first Worker joins him in chopping as soon as the mine is finished, and the Settler is thus rushed.

Spoiler :

Expansion: Location 1 first to nab the copper before Spain does. (Their capital is due west from there.) For future, Location 2 to work the gems. Thereafter, expansion west along the flood plains river seems the natural course.

After the Settler, I think I will make a play for Stonehenge, chopping my out-of-borders forests around the capital to get it. Second city will immediately start on a Worker to chop the forest adjacent to Spain's borders, and thereafter, Warriors to fog bust.

 

[Seraiel]

Ok, 1st thing: You should restart that map, it's absolutely horrible, because it doesn't have any food as far as I can see. Something very important when taking screenshots btw.: Turn on resource-bubbles!

But towards your opening: Your opening is very unorthodox and I'm very sure that it's not optimal. It might give you the fastest Settler, but you'll be very slow in developement afterwards. Try to open like this next time:

1. Always research the necessary food tech first. There is nothing more important in the game than food. In this case, this would have ment Fishing before anything else.
2. If you play Persia, revealing Horses is more important than chopping, because you have an amazingly good Horse-UU. Should you ever play with Persia again, research AH as early as possible (but after the necessary food-techs) .
3. Only then you can think about researching BW.
4. Because you underestimate the food, you couldn't chop out Workboats. This would have been far more important than chopping the Settler. At size 4, your city could have worked 2 Gems + 2 Clams. That takes a lot of time, but then, your city would have been awesome, and you'd probably have produced Settler 3 in the same time as with chopping and have a tremendous advantage in production and commerce from there on.
5. You should always start with Worker first, except if you have a coastal start without anything to do for the Worker but seafood, then WB first while working a heavy tile (preferably Plains-Hill-Forest (PHF) ) . Building the Warrior in the beginning gave you a huge disadvantage, because if you had built the Worker, he could have improved the Floodplains, and then your city would have grown to size 2 and probably even a little further in the same time where you produced Warrior + Worker and grew to size 2. It may sound counter-intuitive to produce a Worker at size 1 because the city doesn't grow, but it'll catch up afterwards, and the Worker is the biggest advantage you can get. A Warrior basically gives you no advantage except that the city grows to size 2, where you can work a maximum of 1 Grassland Forest extra, so you get 1 .
6. Never build SH, unless you're knowing 100% and absolutely what you're doing. SH needs you to research Mysticism, a tech that you not necessarily need, if you found cities so that they have the food in the 1st ring, and then can trade with going early for Alpha. Also (more important) : SH is a huge investment very early, it cripples your advance. You need Workers, Settlers and Warriors. Try to imagine, that resources later are easier to get, so they're worth less. 4 Monuments for 4 cities at 1800 BC is nothing compared to the same cost at 3500 BC, when you only have 1 city.

If you play the way I propose, your 1st city will be much stronger, that advantage will get you in a better position, so it'll get you more cities and more research. Those more cities will bring you again more cities and more units and the research will give you Alpha giving you more techs. This concept is called "snowballing" , because a snowball is started, and it becomes a lawine later.

Sry for being emotional, but the mistakes you make in early game are typical newbie mistakes, and they really cripple your complete position. I only have little experience with Emperor, actually I only ever played 1 game on Emperor (I started playing on Deity and then learned as long and crash and burned 'til I was able to beat it ) , but I wouldn't wonder, if those mistakes already were enough for 50% of the weak position you have later.

 

[sonicboom12345]

2. If you play Persia, revealing Horses is more important than chopping, because you have an amazingly good Horse-UU. Should you ever play with Persia again, research AH as early as possible (but after the necessary food-techs) .

The UU is very good but it often gets screwed against Spear-Barbs. Axes are the only "Barb-proof" unit, so I often prioritize copper before horses and only mass Immortals if I'm planning to take out an AI in an early war. I will try the strat you've recommended tomorrow though.

4. Because you underestimate the food, you couldn't chop out Workboats. This would have been far more important than chopping the Settler. At size 4, your city could have worked 2 Gems + 2 Clams. That takes a lot of time, but then, your city would have been awesome, and you'd probably have produced Settler 3 in the same time as with chopping and have a tremendous advantage in production and commerce from there on.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I wouldn't have been able to chop Workboats anyway without Bronze Working??? Worker first then Work Boat would have allowed me to construct a single farm on the flood plains, but then my Worker would have been idle for 30 turns while I waited for Work Boat to finish, unable to chop or mine gems. Is this really advisable?

I can see Fishing first, but you're really losing me on Animal Husbandry second. Its benefit is purely informational if you don't have animals in your borders, whereas Mining gives you production + gems and Bronze Working gives you chops + slavery. It seems the inferior choice.

Never build SH

I almost never do, but I'd just like to point out: there are guides on this very site that say you can't do without it. In fact, almost every element of my play has been informed by the War Academy here at Civ Fanatics. You may well be correct, and this opening may well be sub-optimal, but I would be grateful if you would not rush to characterize it as "newbie" when the things I'm doing are actually enumerated in strategy guides here on this very site! I am not a newbie, I have played Civ IV for over 10 years and have hundreds of hours sunk into it, and if I am making "newbie mistakes" then I feel it must not be because I am a newbie, but rather because the strategy guides I've taken as gospel all this time were apparently horrible. Again I understand you are trying to help and I will take your advice to heart on a re-genned map, but remarks like that do tend to dishearten me.

 

[ikotomi]

Playing marathon can make the game easier, but one big advantage of playing Normal speed is that you just have more time to play more games.

A common piece of advice is that the first hundred turns are the most important, and on Marathon this roughly turns into 300 turns. At normal speed you can play these scenarios more frequently, and take more experience from how the games turn out. I rarely finish games, as I know around what point conquest or space is a shoe in, and I find the early game the most engaging part. Such an approach can probably quite helpful if your main focus is getting better.

The guides Seraiel linked are quite good and definitely worth a read or two. My advice in a nutshell is, get really good at finding out what move gives you the most benefit that turn. This means working the best tiles and building the best thing. With respects to Civ, most of the time (but not always), this means building wealth and not a building or unit, and whipping a tile away instead of working it. There are a lot of details that one can learn, but at your level, huge improvements are likely to be made just regularly checking all your cities to make sure they are only working good tiles, and building enough workers and managing them so that all good tiles are improved. Learning good diplomacy is the next major Aha moment, but middle finger diplomacy and just solid management of your own civ will still get you through Emperor.

 

[Seraiel]

@ sonicboom12345:

I don't think that I called you a newbie, I wrote "you make newbiemistakes" . The problem actually really is, that the guides in the War Academy are mostly outdated, and gameplay developed towards completely different levels since then. There are really several players that beat Deity regularly even on Normal or Quick speed, which truely are more challenging if comparing two games on the same difficulty, and because you wrote, that you play CIV for 10y and have sunk hundreds of hours in it, and this is really not ment mean in any sort of way: I basically study CIV since 5y already. I won't give any details, but I needed to pause my real studies in RL, so I had a lot of time, and I spend up to 16h / d on it on CIV. I got single games that lasted up to 300h, and very seriously without wanting to sound fancied or braggy, but you play Huge Marathon, and I'm specialized on that setting, because I played nothing else in my 1st year. There is only one player in the world, that has more experience with Huge Marathon on up to Deity level that I'm aware of, his name is kovacsflo, he plays nothing except Large and Huge, because he competes in the Quattromaster competition, where he currently ranks #1.

Don't think that I'm free of failure though, and be very sure that I notice, that you know of what you're talking. Your critique against AH 2nd is actually completely justifyed, and Mining before AH would definitely be the better decision, because of the Gems, because of the Barbs and because the increase in of a Floodplain is only 33% if building a Farm on it, and on Marathon it takes forever. The right advice would have been: Worker at size 1, research Fishing. Build a Farm, continue with building 2 Workboats, work the hammer-heaviest tile you got to speed up the build of the WB until the Farm is ready, then switch towards the Farm, finish growth to size 2, then work the Farm + the hammer-heaviest tile. Research Mining while building the Farm, continue with Mines on the 2 Gems with the Worker after the Farm after the Farm. Then either grow to size 3 and work the FPs Farm + 1 Clams + 1 Gems or grow once more to size 4, to be able to work both Gems. After Settler 1, move with Worker to 2nd city and improve that one, grow to size 5 on WB. When finishing the WB, improve 2nd Clams, build Settler 2. What I don't know about is barbs on Marathon, there, you are the specialist. You probably will decide on building a Warrior after the 1st WB, because it will be ready sooner than the city is size 3 or 4 and escort the Settler with it. After that, park the Warrior in a strategical position so that as little barbs as possible can spawn near your borders. Barbs can't spawn in a 5x5 field around the Warrior. If you need more Warriors for the so called "fog-busting" , you can produce them while growing to size 5, as continuing with Bronzeworking when playing against Barbs is a reasonable move, so you'll be able to chop, you can chop out the WB and 1-2 Warriors afterwards and let possible OF flow into the next Settler. In this case, you need a 2nd Worker for this though, so build that one at size 4 after the Settler.

The reason why I suggested AH so heavily btw. was, that in HoF, we sometimes conquer more than 10 cities 'til 2000 BC:



This is a completely different tactic though and it won't always work. In such a situation, you build 0 Settlers but only Immortals and conquer several AI empires with them:



Note, that I got 18 Workers aswell, and none of them is self-built. This is only to demonstrate the might of the Persian UU, because you wrote, that you'd need to fear Barbs with them. You wouldn't. With 20 Immortals and 10+ cities, you laugh about Barbs. You have so many units, that no Barb could ever spawn near you and they'd all run towards the AI. Maybe it's even possible to conquer a whole map with Immortals on Emperor. Learning a peaceful approach though is truely better, because you can use that one with all leaders and not just Persians. I write this to explain why I rate AH so extremely high with Persians.


Good luck with your next game, and plz try to not get me wrong. Even if I would have written that you're a newbie, that would have been ment completely neutral and totally friendly, everybody is a newbie again and again, when he learns playing a new game, I was a newbie more than 10 times at least . This forum has some players, against which I still consider myself quite newb (sometimes ) .

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I almost never do, but I'd just like to point out: there are guides on this very site that say you can't do without it. In fact, almost every element of my play has been informed by the War Academy here at Civ Fanatics. ..... and if I am making "newbie mistakes" then I feel it must not be because I am a newbie, but rather because the strategy guides I've taken as gospel all this time were apparently horrible. Again I understand you are trying to help and I will take your advice to heart on a re-genned map, but remarks like that do tend to dishearten me.

Try not to take criticism to heart, we're trying to help you improve that's all and you've shown you can defend yourself well. Yes the guides in the War Academy are hopelessly out of date I'm afraid - I'll take that up with the powers that be. The guides in Seraiel's signature are much better.

To add to what has been said -

1) Get the BUG Mod - it will give you much more information at your fingertips.

2) Don't use "No Espionage" - Espionage is great in helping see what the AIs are doing and the "No Espionage" option is hopelessly broken.

 

[Major Tom]

Hi Sonicboom,

Emperor require that you pay attention to diplomacy. With Shaka on one side and Isabella on the other you need friends. Isabella is a prime candidate. Join her religion and you got a strong ally until modern era.

Kaitzilla has an excellent writeup going on in the Stories&tales section. Read it to learn about the importance of diplomatic relationship (among other things), I guess around 50% of the writeup is about diplomatic matters. He also has a great guide in Strategy articles: Know your enemy. Of course you need to get the early game going well, so adopt the basics about worker techs, growth and hammers outlined by many here.

Also get a couple of caravels going so you get more trading options for your hard earned techs.

Don't let Serials posts put you off. His posts are not very elegant written and revolve much about himself and his exhausting playstyle with a flavour of humiliation of players below deity. And for Obsoletes (another deity) post, I am speechless.

Good luck!