Civ4 Game of the Month - Newbies' Guide to Getting Started

[DynamicSpirit]

We love Civilization, and Civ4 in particular - many of us feel that Civ4 was the pinnacle of the game, offering a fascinating variety of strategies to build your world. Such a good game that many of us are still playing it 20 years later, preferring it to more recent Civ versions that offer better graphics but often more 'dumbed down' gameplay.

What is Game of the Month?
Game of the Month (GOTM) is your friendly competition that lets you play Civ4 single player (so against the computer AI) but within a community of players - so you can compare your how you did with everyone else.

Every few weeks we release new starting save. You download and start playing on the same map as everyone else. When you've won (or lost) the game, you upload your final save. We typically leave each competition open for 1 month or a bit longer, then we publish the results, and give various medals and awards for such things as the person who got the highest score or the fastest (least turns) victory. And along the way you can discuss your strategies with other players. It's a great way to be part of a Civ community AND improve your playing.

Getting Set Up - Summary
Before you can play, you need Civ4 installed on your PC. And for the competition to work, we need everyone running exactly the same version of Civ4. There's a step-by-step guide to getting set up below, but basically you'll need Civ4 Beyond the Sword patched to version 3.19, and with the BUFFY mod version 3.19.005 installed. BUFFY helps you by making all the in-game information easier to access, and helps us by logging that the game is being played within the competition rules. You'll also need to set Civ4 to run with admin privileges (otherwise BUFFY can't work properly), and if you are playing on Steam, you need to play the beta version of the game (Don't worry - 'beta' here is a misnomer - it is an actual production version).

Playing the Game - Summary
Our cardinal rule is that you must not replay any turns. The idea of the competition is, you are playing a map that you haven't seen before. If you make a mistake, you learn from it and recover as best you can - that way you become a much better player. You don't just quit and reload!

Check this forum for announcements of new competitions. Each announcement will give you a link to download the starting save and start playing. You'll also see 'spoiler' threads where you can discuss how you did, and - after each competition has closed - the results.

Again more details below.

Getting Set Up - The Details

You have to be playing on Windows - unfortunately, we can't support other platforms.

To Make Sure you have Civ Set up:

1. Get Civ 4 Beyond the Sword installed (Or Civ4 Complete, including Beyond the Sword). Beyond the Sword was the latest expansion pack for Civ4, and pretty much all our games now use it.
2. Make sure it is patched to version 3.19. If it's a recent purchase, it may already be patched. If not, you can download the patch here.
3. Install the BUFFY mod. Again, you can download it here.
4. Locate the Civ Beyond the Sword executable. It will be the file named Civ4BeyondSword.exe in the directory on your PC you installed Civ to. Set Civ4BeyondSword.exe to run as administrator. To do that, right-click on it, choose Compatibility from the dialog, and check the Run this Program as an Administrator checkbox:

STEAM USERS: If you are installing from Steam, you must use the beta version of Civ, otherwise BUFFY won't work. The story there is that the original Civ4 used GameSpy for multiplayer. GameSpy subsequently shut down, so Steam created a new Civ4 to work on their own multiplayer platform. Unfortunately the new version broke most existing mods, so after an outcry, Steam put up the original Civ as a 'beta'. Since GOTM isn't multiplayer, the misnamed 'beta' is fine.

GOG USERS: If you've installed Civ from GOG: The GOG version uses a non standard path which means BUFFY can't find your installation. Please PM @Noble Zarkon for the patch to resolve this issue.

If you've done all that, you should be good to download the latest competition starting save and start playing!

Playing the Game - the Details

You've seen an announcement of a new competition, and downloaded the save. What next? Well you literally just play the game, remembering not to replay any turns. Once you've finished, go to this page and upload your save.

We're fairly strict about no replaying because the competition wouldn't be fair if some people started replaying to get a better result. It has to be your first attempt to play.

If the game has become not-fun because you've made too many mistakes/have no chance of winning, then you can just submit where you've got to as a 'retired' game so you'll still feature in the results. Of course, once you've submitted, you can replay as much as you want for your own pleasure. But if you submit a game that includes replays, we'll almost certainly disqualify it.

You can also submit a retired game if you simply won't have time to finish playing before the competition closes. Please do that rather than just not submitting - it helps keep the community going.

If your game crashes while playing (happens occasionally), then you should send a PM to the mapmaker (that's usually whoever announced the game) saying what happened. Then we'll normally OK you to carry on playing from your latest autosave, as long as you try to make the same moves as you did the first time.

Discussing your game

Besides game announcements, this forum is where you can discuss your game with other players. To make sure you don't spoil anyone else's game by revealing information about the map, we have these rules:

1. In the game announcement thread, discuss starting strategies based on the information in the announcement. Once you have opened the save and started playing, DO NOT post in the game announcement thread.
2. We'll open 'spoiler' threads - usually one for people who've played up to 1AD, and one for people who've completed the game. You should avoid looking at these threads until you've played up to that point, and then use those thread to discuss how your game went.
3. Once the competition is over, we'll post the results and congratulate the winners. At that point there are no restrictions.

Don't worry if that seems a lot to remember: Each thread states any restrictions on posting, so just check what the starting post to any thread says before you post in it.

Trouble-shooting

If you've set up Civ correctly and installed BUFFY, then when you start playing a game you should see this dialog:

That's expected - it's just Windows double checking you want to run a program as administrator. Click Yes and the game will start.

If instead you see this dialog:

That means Civ isn't running as administrator. You'll be able to play the game, but BUFFY can't record the competition information we need, so we'll probably reject it from the competition. You should click Cancel and fix the admin privileges, as described above, before you start playing.

Adventurer, Contender, and Challenger Saves

We know that sometimes people want to play GOTM, but feel the difficulty of a particular game is too easy or too hard for them. To accommodate this, we sometimes (not always) offer a couple of variants of the games, known as contender, adventurer and challenger.

1. The contender save is the normal competition game which most people play.
2. The adventurer save is the same map, but we've set it up to make it a bit easier. You're welcome to play this if you feel a particular competition game is a bit above your skill level. If you submit an adventurer save, your game will still be listed in the results, but you won't qualify for any medals or awards
3. The challenger save on the other hand is set up to be extra-hard. Play challenger, and you'll be given extra kudos when the competition results are published.

We always provide the contender starting save, but we don't always provide adventurer and challenger saves - because it's extra work for us to create them. If we've provided them for a particular competition, that'll be stated in the game announcement, and the game download page will have all the saves available.

Links

• This GOTM forum: You can find the community, game discussions and new game announcements in this forum.
• The GOTM Server is the website where the games are hosted. You download the starting save and upload your finished game there. You'll also find all past games there to play or look at the results and maps.

If having read all that, you're still stuck, just post questions in this thread.

Thanks to @lymond, @Noble Zarkon and @Blake00 for help and advice compiling this post.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Previous related threads

There are some old threads that are now somewhat out of date but may contain relevant setup and playing information - so I'm linking them here for reference:

• The original Welcome to GOTM announcement from 20 years' ago here:
• Notes on exploits here. There used to be various in-game exploits that were possible but not within the spirit of the game. This thread mentioned the rules around those - but that's largely now a non-issue because those exploits have generally been fixed by various patches or by BUFFY.
• Instructions for playing Vanilla and Warlords games here and here. Playing Vanilla and Warlords from DVD is difficult because Windows stopped supporting the DVD checks that those games depended on. Partly for that reason, we generally no longer run Vanilla or Warlords GOTMs.

You can also look up queries people asked about BUFFY on Steam and GOG here and here. These threads may be helpful if you installed Civ from Steam or GOG and are having trouble getting BUFFY working.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Reserved for future use

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Reserved for future use

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Reserved for future use