Condensed tips for beginners?

[Mango]

A free artist in a fresh city is giving you expansion in just a few turns.

I've found that once you can build culture it's better to start off new cities doing that instead. If you have a good production square then just stick your one worker on that and you should expand your borders in 3 turns or so.

 

[frankcor]

Excellent tip. Now why didn't I think of that?

 

[cabert]

I've found that once you can build culture it's better to start off new cities doing that instead. If you have a good production square then just stick your one worker on that and you should expand your borders in 3 turns or so.

that's for warlords only, since for vanilla it will take 5 turns of working a 4 hammers mine to get that...
a free artist doesn't eat, so he gives you the culture you need + Beaker(s) without slowing your growth

 

[Rafaelp]

Ive hearing that you can change the settings for permanent alliances anybody knows how?

 

[wonkydonk]

Hi, just started playing and am celtics, i'm trying to take over a city but they have longbowmen and i aint able to kill them no matter what unit i use. any ideas or is there a guide of what units are good agaist what units.

thanks

 

[cabert]

Hi, just started playing and am celtics, i'm trying to take over a city but they have longbowmen and i aint able to kill them no matter what unit i use. any ideas or is there a guide of what units are good agaist what units.

thanks

against longbow you need :
- to bombard city defense down (catapults do it well, trebuchets do it better)
- to use either overwhelming technology (= cavalry or better) or overwhelming numbers + collateral damage (=catapults/trebuchet in big numbers with city raider promotions to have a chance of hitting the top defender).

You need to be sure to kill every longbow in the same turn. If you don't they will get promotions and will be even harder to kill.
If you use suicidal cats/trebs, don't worry about the 3 first ones : they will die. After that, shuffle through your best units to see if you have good odds or not. If not, suicide more cats.
Longbows are nasty defenders!

 

[wonkydonk]

when i use catapults and trachents it says it don't affect the defence. i've used cavalry and archers and most i've ever been able to kill is 2 out 3. really sucky. i will give this ago again

 

[cabert]

when i use catapults and trachents it says it don't affect the defence. i've used cavalry and archers and most i've ever been able to kill is 2 out 3. really sucky. i will give this ago again

i don't really understand what you say, but i will assume you attacked with the cats/trebuchets.
Before actually attacking, you need to bombard! it's the icon looking like a darts target (red and white concentric circles).

If you don't have enough troops, don't attack!

 

[wonkydonk]

i don't really understand what you say, but i will assume you attacked with the cats/trebuchets.
Before actually attacking, you need to bombard! it's the icon looking like a darts target (red and white concentric circles).

If you don't have enough troops, don't attack!

i have now discoiverd musketts and grendeirs does make it easier to kill longbowmen?

or does the above still apply

 

[frankcor]

Musketmen with a base strength or 9 are only 1 point stronger than a Maceman with a base strength of 8. In addition, Macemen can have the City Raider promotions that are not available to Musketmen. So in general, veteran Macemen are superior to Musketmen when trying to capture cities garrisoned by Longbowmen. You'll still need to rely on catapults to take down the city's cultural defense and to soften the target up a bit with collateral damange.

Grenadiers, on the other hand, have a base strength of 12. I find that upgrading my veteran Macemen to Grenadiers yields great grunts for the taking of cities. A Grenadier with the City Raider 3 promotion can kill a fortified Longbowman even when all the Cultural Defense of a city hasn't been removed.

 

[wonkydonk]

cool will have to try that tonight, i just discovered cannons, that should help abit too

 

[frankcor]

Oh yeah, cannons will definitely help. They work good even against Infantry garrisons.

 

[cabert]

even with cannons, it's worth bombing the defenses to 0 before attacking

 

[wonkydonk]

yeppie i did it, 2/4 cities distroyed, just another 2 then their finished

 

[frankcor]

Way to go, wonkydonk! Go get 'em.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I have found that after a fighter does recon or attacks, you can select them and put them on intercept. You don't have to put them on intercept without attacking.

 

[stratos_v2]

i've only recently begun to actually care about what bonuses the units in a stack have. (yes shame on me )
but what would be a best practice concerning attack stacks.

currently i want to take out a city (to get some oil going) and i'm creating stacks of 3 infantry of which 2 have combat I and a plus against gunpowder units. (i already know the enemy has gunpowder units) and 1 with combat I and heal. To top it off i give each stack also a artillery.

would that be good, or are there more optimal stacks.

i devide them in stacks of 4 to counter enemy cannons. (which he has lots of) and don't want to see one large stack get decimated by a few enemy suicide cannons.

 

[stratos_v2]

as a answer to my own question.

The Stack o’ Doom:
Effective Composition And Use Of The Offensive Military Stack In Civilization IV:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185838

 

[frankcor]

Yep, there's not much more to add to The Stack o'Doom link.

 

[Nufuhsus]

you should have a pdf version, don't you?

Yeah, I do. Sorry it has been like 100 turns since you asked this question but I did not find the User CP till recently.

What about the civlopedia? I have read somewhere about a mod for it to make it easier but I can't seem to find it again. Has anyone tried it? If so, would you recomend it? If so, where do I get it?