Condensed tips for beginners?

[Sian]

get way more cities out faster and use way more units (don't think about entering unless you have at least 5 units pre2000bc or 10+ units after, with 50% siege after 1ad)

i once had a game where i could only grab 3 cities as Mongol before touching maya all over on my pennesula ... beelined Horseback riding (stronger military, than anyone else ... beelined this since i had horses, but no copper and due to my UU/UB), while building a couple of chariots for soaking and medic duty, and chopped a couple of Ger's and UU's and went on a rampage with 5 chariots and 10 Kelsiks in 1500bc eating everthing he threw at me, including two Holkans ......

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Ah, thank you for the clarification! I noticed that with the trade routes playing my game last night.

So, here is my next question, and maybe there is a good strategy article somewhere that explains this and someone could link me to it. I have been in a war for 3000 years. I am slowly winning, but I think I am getting so far behind the rest of the world I will have no hope of winning. What did I do wrong?

Your mistake was not to make peace with her after having captured one city. Of course, taking out a rival early gives a huge advantage, but if you discover that you aren't going to finish her off any time soon, make peace, build up your troops (and your land, and some buildings such as monasteries and libraries), then attack again. To avoid the diplomatic penalty for starting wars, try to isolate your enemy and, if, possible, bribe other civs to participate in the next war against her. Then, instead of disliking you because "You declared war on our friend", they'll like you because "Our mutual military struggle brings us together".

Also, remember that you can never have too many workers. When in doubt about what to build next, always build a worker or a new military unit. Though you shouldn't neglect to build courthouses. Getting those in place as soon as possible is extremely important for your ecoomy, and against spies.

I do believe you have lost this game, but I recommend you to keep playing it. You will learn a lot.

 

[mrjacksplat]

Wind/Water Mills- How many should you make in one area? Last night I built three in a row on neighboring tiles, is that good or stupid? Is it wise to built multiple improvements like Forges in a city? Or is ONE forge in each city the best way to go?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

You can never have more than one instance of each bulding in one city. So only one forge... but some buildings can work together: forge+ factory+ IronWorks... coupled with civics: organized religion + bureaucraty... to create sinergies .

About the improvements: it really depends on the purpose of your city. When you know what you want from a particular city, you'll know what to put around it (hint: farms for growth, cottages for science, mine for production). Watermills and windmills can be perfectly fine late game in the right city

Cheers

 

[blazer-glory]

I've struggled with this game for years, partly because Im not the brightest kid in the class and Ive always struggled with strategy games. I think my main weakness is with the finer details like types of governments and religions. I'll try and take all this info on board for future sessions!

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I've struggled with this game for years, partly because Im not the brightest kid in the class and Ive always struggled with strategy games. I think my main weakness is with the finer details like types of governments and religions. I'll try and take all this info on board for future sessions!

On the easier difficulty levels, try to found a religion, and then build a temple and pop a Great Prophet to establish the holy shrine for that religion. (The easiest way to do that is to research Priesthood, build a temple for your religion - or somebody else's!) and wait until you get a Great Prophet who can found the shrine for your religion in the city where the religion was founded. Not only will that make your subjects happy, but if you manage to spread your religion to other countries, they'll like you better; and if you found the shrine, you can earn huge amounts of money that way. Moreover, if you do manage to spread a religion you founded around, and also establish its shrine, remember that you can then found to Wall Street and Oxford University in the city where the eligion was founded. You will be amazed at how your economy and resaearch will skyrocket. (Corporations, if you fond any, should also be founded in that city.) Furthermore, if you and somebody else of your religion (but preferably you) founds the Apostolic Palace, it can do wonders for mobbing civs you don't like and stop unwanted invasions.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

The other question I had was about buildings left in a captured city, does collateral damage from siege weapons affect how/what is left when you capture? If they don't, what does?

If you found an early religion and it has spread to several other civs before another civ founds a religion, they'll shy away from inviting everybody's hatred by switching to the religion they founded. Unless we are talking about Isabella or Saladin, of course.

 

[legendairy]

Hey,
thanks for all the advice!

BTW, how do Great General XP points work? I see the number needed jump sometimes and not move when I win some battles.

 

[DMOC]

If you win a battle, your military unit that won will gain at least 1 experience point. Then, that XP is added on to your "total" XP. For non-imperialistic leaders, I think you need 30 XP to get your first Great General. If you have 30 units that all gained 1 XP from battles, then you will get a GG and your GG XP total goes back to zero while you need 60 for the next. I don't remember if the third is 90 or 120 ... hm ....

 

[zap!]

Ive been playing the game for a few weeks. I have a few questions. Ive been playing the game with a couple of friends of mine against comps / with comps on each players side.

* I get often beaten in the lategame although ive been controlling the whole game from start (built 4/5 of all wonders, i was far more technologically advanced)
Does the techno advantage that you get by playing good in beginning even up in the end?

We are playing a few games, one of which is a medium sized islands map where every player has 1 own island, so expanding is really hard. Comp seems to make like 12-13 towns but im having 5.. 100% research whole game time, but still seems too slow (ive asked my friends they have 60-80% whole game).

the whole 1800ad+ also feels very difficult to understand what to do / what to build as you get alot of new units and buildings and stuff to do.. + alot of micro since everything expands.

how did you new players learn what to do, just play play play?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Welcome on CFC!

how did you new players learn what to do, just play play play?

Yes! and reading those boards

About your research problem, the thing is % slider doesn't matter at all. You want to increase your raw beaker ouput (the number next to the %slider in BTS, in the economy advisor on other versions). Usually the best way to do that is to grow your empire: more cities that produce more commerce (which can then be converted in science) and more resources to have bigger cities.

Most of the time a 20 cities empire at 40% slider will outresearch a 5 cities empire at 100% (this is without taking into account the different hammers output, which is vastly superior with a big empire).

The war academy have some nice articles about empire management, and you can read some games here on the ST forum, and also in the Succesion Games forum

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

 

[JTMacc99]

the whole 1800ad+ also feels very difficult to understand what to do / what to build as you get alot of new units and buildings and stuff to do.. + alot of micro since everything expands.

how did you new players learn what to do, just play play play?

True. My best guess is that you don't play the game with a victory type in mind. At some point when you are cranking along, you need to actually decide how you are going to win the darn game and adjust your strategy accordingly. (These forums, and the sample games like Sisiutil's ALC challenge games, will give you a good idea of how people win games and what actions they take to do so.)

Also, if you are researching at 100% on the slider for the whole games, you're not expanding fast enough.

 

[DMOC]

The 100% slider thing is true. I generally like to have a 50-60% slider. Any more means I haven't expanded enough. Of course, if I don't have room to expand, it's time to take out another civ.

However, if I REX (rapidly expand), it's easy to get negative gold at 0%. That's not a problem if you know how to rebound from economic crashes. This is NECESSARY on immortal and deity.

 

[quantumciv]

hello guys......i m 4m india.i am new to civ4(version 1.74) and to this forum.i have been a lifelong fan of rpgs(read WoW) and RTS s....but when i first tried this game.....MAN DOES IT ROCK!!anyway, i am not rocking at all..i am getting pwned by AI....well,not crushing them,which i have a nasty habit of,thx 2 years of gaming.now,as a sincere noob,i request you to help me out with these starting issues......
1>which is a priority in early game?a/like 3-4 well built specialized cities with hopefully a few strategic/else resources? OR b/spamming cities in semi ideal terrins to grab reources until i am choking with maintenace?(like 6-7 of them?)thats what I seems to do.
2>in a good GPF,whats an ideal GP point/turn in mid game?(not with philosophical,not includin wonders...with national epic and such..)
I have a LOT of things to ask,4 now please tell me these!
Btw,settler and chieftain were pieces o' cakes,won a game fairly comfy in warlord, but........noble is trouble.
AND,i am not cheating.
AND,please dont tell me to browse these forums.thats what i'v been doing 4-5 hrs a day this past week,the rest of the time goes to the game and 4-5 hrs of sleep...but u guys know how huge this database is for a noob.i downloaded quite a few guidelines by u guys already,and still have unclear issues,like "dot mapping","specialized economy",......................etc etc but 4 now,HELP ME!they can come later i suppose!p.s i dont even know if i am posting in the right forum,guess i need a bit more poking around...

 

[JTMacc99]

Okay, I won't tell you to browse the forums, BUT I will tell you to print this article and read it thoroughly.

The correct answer to questions like you've asked is always "it depends", which is a big part of why Civ IV is as great as it is. However, I think there is certainly a base strategy you can use for most games at the Noble level that will allow you to master the concepts of the game.

For your #1, as long as you have the room to do so, a pretty sound strategy would be to attempt to settle 4-6 cities on your own. Three cities is usually not enough to generate everything you need to move successfully into the next era and seven cities is usually too costly to maintain until you have the ability to build courthouses and have the extra trade routes from currency.

You'd like your capital to have a lot of food, which then will let you turn around and use it to produce the majority of your workers and settlers once it's grown to it's happiness limit. (Important early strategy that is often not understood by people new to the game: You need to build lots of workers and improve your land as quickly as possible. As many as two per city, but anything at or below 1 per city is bad.) As a matter of fact, the first thing your capital should build is a worker, and the first thing you should research is the technology that allows your worker to improve the resource tiles around your capital. The big exception to this would be if start with fishing and have a seafood resource available for your capital, and that means you can build a workboat first.

The next group of cities you'll settle (and this is better advice at Noble than it would be at higher levels when the AI will prevent you from doing this) should ideally grab all of the resources and efficiently cover a big chunk of territory around your capital. DO NOT underestimate the value of food resources as you settle your cities. Nothing is more important than food for early success. Make sure your workers are ready to improve those food tiles next to your new cities immediately after you settle them.

One of your first cities, hopefully no later than your third city, should be a production city. Ideally, this city would be settled with a strategic resource like copper or iron (maybe horses), and a food resource. You would like this city to build a monument (for the border expansion) and barracks first. After that, you should set it to produce nothing but the best units available. Your workers should concentrate on mining the hills around this city and farming the grasslands. This will be your production city, and it is a critical component to your success. At some point, you'll also want this city to build a granary. There is no reason to build commerce building in this city, although later in the game both markets and grocers might be helpful due to the increases in happiness and health they provide.



I hope that helps a little!

 

[kingdeadley]

Catapults are absolutely essential.

To take a city with a big defence bonus (like 30% or more) defended by three or more strong units, you simply MUST use Catapults. Just throwing Swordsmen at the city is plain suicide. Facing Longbowmen or Axmen in a city with a big defence bonus, your Swordsmen will die at a rate or at least four to each killed defender. And you will provide the opponent with free promotions for his surviving units...

Instead, place three or four Catapults next to the city. (If the enemy doesn't have a Catapult in the city, you can place them in a stack, and add a strong defender to defend it, otherwise spread them out around the city.) Now bombard the city until the defences are down to 0% (this may take a couple of turns - be patient!). Then attack the city with your Catapults! Yes, you'll lose most (probably all) of them, but they are cheap to build. Their awesome (overpowered?) collateral damage ability will soften up the defenders enough to let you move in with moderately strong offensive units, such as Swordsmen (prefferably with City Raider promotion), and most likely kill all defenders without losing a single attacker.

Meanwhile, your other cities should keep building new Catapults, to attack the next city...

-- Roland

Just for the begainer, callateral damage is found under the barrage upgraid and what it does is attacks affects some to most of the defending units

 

[gingermick]

Hi guys,

After reading all 59 pages of this condensed tips, yeah go figure, I would like to add a few of my own:

1. If you change to the Slavery Civic, USE IT! and learn how to use it well. It has been hinted at, in a few posts, but I think that the slavery civic, so early can be the most powerful tool in the box of civics. Have no qualms about culling your pop to achieve something. If you have a floodplain rich city, its the only way to build things quickly early. The art is when to chop, I normally chop when the city is pushing size 6 (with no happy buildings in it) and would expand in one or two turns. The reduction, to 3, would only last a turn or 2 and then back to a respectable 4. The 10 turn unhappiness is quite short in early game terms, and if you are chopping to create a defensive archer, or granary and getting the health bonus, well they may be happy about that anyway, so no real loss. Also Chopping pop for a settler (or worker) is far from a false economy. If you have a flood plain rich city, it will expand very quickly, and potentially go into unhappiness due to overcrowding, working on a worker or settler will stop your pop expanding but allowing your cottages to grow to accommodate them, chop a pop or two at the end of the build schedule, you will regain them within a few turns and your city may have expanded to accom them. The message is, dont just change to a Civic because you have discovered something that will allow you to change, you aint going up some sort of evolutionary ladder by going to the "next big thing" if you aint gonna use it.

2. Intial Capital settlement. It is so tempting to just accept where you are put, most of the time, they aint that bad, but the temptation to "just get building" for fear of lagging behind in the first 2 turns is immense. But by switching on the resources and yield overlays as a first thing you do, can change your mind. I normally move a max of 2 turns away from my initial point, (mostly 1 is sufficient, but I have started surrounded by tundra once!) to maximimise your potential "down history" yield, this is vital and a good choice at the start will literaly pay a 1000 times over.

3a. Recce your area, if you have a scout, good, a warrior, ok, your city aint gonna get attacked within the first 10 turns (multiplayer is different here) so you can build a warrior, using the one you were given to explore.

3a. Read the map. It sounds obvious but this is intended for beginners. Unless you are using some bizarre map scenario, Tundra is near the poles, and Jungle is near the equator, so it should give you an idea where you are, and which directions are -normally- the best to explore for exploitation reasons. Follow rivers, they go somewhere, either to the sea (Coastal city potential, also flank protection) or to the hills and mountains (mining and resource potential)

3b. Plan your expansion. Its been said before, but grab something, anything! a resource of any shape or form. I know there is chat in the forum about setlleing by this resource then this one, or between two, but sometimes its a luxury to be in those positions. But when planning your 2nd and 3rd cities choose in accordance with my tip No2.

3c. Early on I try and get a thinnish Civ that goes from coast to coast, or take a large pennisula, then the area I have fenced off from the others, is mine for expoitation. Yeah they will come and find you and try to put cities in "your fenced off area" (totally artificial, but its a game!)but they will be easier to kill off and and take later. Also if you can trap a Civ into a small fenced off area, dont give him open borders, he wont meet the others, will become strangled resource and tech wise and will be easy to take a bit later on. (do like the idea of gifting a city in your area to a civ far away to ruin their economy! nice one - cheers for that)

3d. The strategy I prefer is not to have too many borders with others (I dont play nicely with other children!) Think about this early on, do you want to have to juggle with the diplo stuff with loads of Civs rubbing up against your borders, or deal with them from affar? So coast to coast is good for me.

3e. Jungle! A lot of ppl have said "get chopping that Jungle" I say you dont have to if you dont need to, its workers wasted. (Indian fast workers are awesome BTW a very underated unit) There is normally a large jungle expanse in the middle of the largest continent, but jungle is a barrier to you and the other Civs. No one likes fighting in the jungle, so I normally send a settler down and settle right on the edge of the jungle, put a obilisk there and culturally claim as much as I can. Put an archer, spearman and a axe in the city, and pref behind a river, (and a hill! lovely lovely defensive bonuses) and you are nearly untouchable well into the game. And jungle movement being so slow allows you to see well in advance whos coming to tea! Only if you have expoited the others cities to the full, then hit the jungle (or if you just happen to have a spare worker, who is idle! - IDLE! WHY?) and have a few settlers ready to expoit further into the jungle to expand your empire.

4. The Power graph - When deciding to attack someone, or if being attacked, look at the power graph and then ANALYSE it. Does your opponent have a large coastline? (the AIs love ships early in the game) have you seen many of his ships? or is he landlocked? And the same for you. Remember the power graph is for all units and if he has a navy, they cant fight on land! similary the graph may say you are more powerful, but if you have a large navy and he is landlocked watch out! Also if your opponent has a very lage area, but a similar power, his force/area ratio is going to be lower, therefore his forces are either spread weakly, or concentrated in cities, giving you pillage potential, but always be aware of his unit types, horses can cover a greater area than elephants. Its all in the analysis!

There you go, will add more later!

 

[JT_1973]

Hi. I am a complete beginner to Civ4. I played my first game last night and got to the final stages of the game. I had fission, rocketry and Manhatten Project, so I was able to build ICBMs but my opponent wasn't. I tried to nuke one of his cities, it exploded, but didn't seem to do any serious damage, i.e. the city was still standing, he still had grenadiers and whatnot on the tile, and there was no obvious damage to the surrounding 8 tiles. I tried a second ICBM with the same result. Eventually I went in with a couple of gunships and destroyed the city pretty quickly. Does this sound right to you? Thanks in advance?

 

[cripp7]

Hi. I am a complete beginner to Civ4. I played my first game last night and got to the final stages of the game. I had fission, rocketry and Manhatten Project, so I was able to build ICBMs but my opponent wasn't. I tried to nuke one of his cities, it exploded, but didn't seem to do any serious damage, i.e. the city was still standing, he still had grenadiers and whatnot on the tile, and there was no obvious damage to the surrounding 8 tiles. I tried a second ICBM with the same result. Eventually I went in with a couple of gunships and destroyed the city pretty quickly. Does this sound right to you? Thanks in advance?

You'll usually want to nuke cities you're planning to take over or ones that are legendary in culture. 1 nuke won't destroy a city per say it'll weaken units alot in and 1 tile adjacent. But it's right what you did!

 

[JT_1973]

You'll usually want to nuke cities you're planning to take over or ones that are legendary in culture. 1 nuke won't destroy a city per say it'll weaken units alot in and 1 tile adjacent. But it's right what you did!

Ah, right cool. I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong. I was expecting to see more carnage. Thanks for the info!