Condensed tips for beginners?

[mystyfly]

Welcome to the forums, yanner39

The best way to deal with health and happiness (tough it works better with health) is trading for resources you lack. A hammer-poor city will take ages to build an aqueduct. Why not just trade for corn? With the granary, it's +2 health too.

Happiness is usually harder to come by via resources. Use civics like HR (Hereditary Rule) or Representation if you build the mids or use the slider if you build theatres and coliseums. Also while having angry people is really bad (they cost money and do nothing!) it's not that bad to have unhealthy people to it's always good to avoid that too of course.

To keep your people healthy lategame you should always leave some forests unchopped, every two forests give 1 health point. If you have problems with early-to midgame, use Slavery and whip those people to get some more units/buildings and avoid .

 

[yanner39]

Good stuff. Thanks mystyfly.

I never thought of trading for resources. In one game, I was being friends (open borders) with everyone, then I started upsetting other Civs because I was trading with their enemies.

This is why I love this game. It's more complex than others I've played.

Thanks again.

 

[dalamb]

You mention being surprised by unhealthiness and unhappiness; you might consider using a mod like BUG, if you're running BtS, that warns you when you're about to suffer from these. Alternatively you might have to check your cities more often and not let them grow if they are about to suffer one or the other of these problems.

 

[CCRunner]

I think that you need to whip your citizenry more regularly. It reduces population, reducing and if you whip for 2+ pop it reduces also.

them until they're happy

 

[yanner39]

You mention being surprised by unhealthiness and unhappiness; you might consider using a mod like BUG, if you're running BtS, that warns you when you're about to suffer from these. Alternatively you might have to check your cities more often and not let them grow if they are about to suffer one or the other of these problems.

I think this is one of my biggest problems. I tend to rush my turns. I don't take time to carefully look at things.

 

[mystyfly]

I check every city every turn until around 1500AD. You don't have to do that but if you see a city about to grow you should check it. Otherwise the BUG mod is a GREAT tool to help you spot things and save time while still have a great overview of the situation.

 

[Sian]

BUG's proberly cut down my time per turn down ~20% (when getting to midgame) simply due to that it serves you a lot of infomations you otherwise should jump around in diffent places to look for ... still doing that, but on a much smaller scale now

 

[JTMacc99]

Hey, I've got a question that doesn't deserve it's own thread:

What's the deal with a vassal breaking free? I've never had one do it on me, but it seems like it is possible.

I ask, because it is my intention to win my current game by sailing around the world and making all of the other civs bow before me. It's a game with custom settings of 4 continents, low sea level, and 9 total civs. Having recently rid my continent of it's only other civ, I now have a good tech lead on most of the world (Zara's pretty close) and a very comfortable power lead. I'd like to just start sailing my giant stack of cannons/grens/rifles around to enemy captials, capturing them and other core cities if necessary, accepting capitulization and then moving on to the next target.

The thing is, I'd really rather not have a bunch of big angry (revolting) cities all over the world if I don't need to keep them. But I'm concerned that by just liberating them, I might be creating a situation where a vassal could break free. I'm just wondering if that is going to be likely, and I don't know the rules for it.

(Also, it would be EXTRA annoying if a useful vassal broke free when I have plans for it. I expect Julius Ceaser to be extremely helpful when I issue my DOW on his long-time neighbor and enemy Bismark. Frankly, I can probably have my troops in a completely different part of the world for twenty turns while they slug it out. Once the Germans have suffered substantial losses to my Roman attack dogs, I should make quick work of them. Heh, heh, heh.)

 

[CCRunner]

If you cripple them enough, they'll never be able to get to a point were they can do it. they need like 50% of you population or land to have the option. Even then, if they capitulate you're probably a lot more powerful than they are so they won't risk another war.

 

[Dresden]

If it's a vassal you get through capitulation, then there are only 3 ways for them to break free:

1) Their land and population both must be at least 50% of yours.
2) Their land must be reduced to 50% of what it was at the time of capitulation.
3) You demand a resource for nothing in return and they refuse.

If you're big enough, #1 won't happen. If you help defend them during wars and make sure they don't lose any cities #2 shouldn't happen either. And if you make trades rather than out-and-out demands, #3 shouldn't be a problem. Note that for the first couple of turns they should agree any resource demand; it's when you make demands much later on that there's a chance for them to refuse (which is considered as a declaration of war by them.)

On the other hand, a peaceful vassal (including a liberated colony) can choose to break free whenever they want and so those are much riskier if you are relying on them.

 

[JTMacc99]

1) Their land and population both must be at least 50% of yours.

Well, the only way I can take care of this problem is to actaully take control of one one of the rival civilization's continent. I've got the forbidden palace in my back pocket, so it wouldn't be too crippling for the economy, but actually cleaning one of these big civs off of the map is going to take time and resources I don't want to expend.

If a civ meets that first one, what are the odds it actually DOES break free?

Also, very important, does it measure 50% of just my land or population, or 50% of my land or population including the proportion contributed by my vassals? In other words, once a vassal is added, it will say my percentage of the world's population has gone from 26% to 34%. Does the break-free calculation look at the 34% number? I assume it does. Also, when a vassal looks to see the 50% number, does it remove it's own contribution to my total land and population?

 

[MichaelScott]

New player here. Just bought the game off ebay and it did not come with a manual

Anyways, I keep reading about whipping. Someone please describe the concept and how to do it for me.

Thanks in advance

 

[CCRunner]

It's using the slavery civic to convert population into hammers. It's often the easiest way to get new cities up and running with all the infrastructure they need. To do it you have to run slavery, then go into the city screen (the one with the white circles) and over to the bottom on the left. There'll be a bunch of options like emphasize food. One of the ones near the top will allow you to whip some population into hammers.

 

[mystyfly]

Basically you turn 1 pop into 30 hammers which go into the current build (but you have to sacrifice so many pop so it's possible to finish the build). The build will be completed after your turn so you can't immediately start a new one.
This way you often generate lots of hammer overflow which can be used for wonders for example (wonders get a malus when whipping (50% iirc) but the overflow generated from whipping an unit for example doesn't ).

For more insight in whipping, click here and for more about hammer overflow, click here.

 

[Sisiutil]

New player here. Just bought the game off ebay and it did not come with a manual

Anyways, I keep reading about whipping. Someone please describe the concept and how to do it for me.

Thanks in advance

There should be a .PDF copy of the manual on one of the disks. Did you get just original Civ IV, or did you buy Beyond the Sword as well?

 

[yanner39]

I started a game on Noble, custom game with 4 Civs including myself. I started out well, slowly building my Civ, I had 3 cities.

I save the game, quit. Today I come back, and now, the barbarians just won't stop. At one point, I had 4 groups of them inside my BFC. They razed a few cottages and my wheat farm and my mine by the time I got rid of them. But now they just won't stop. Turn after turn a new group attacks.

Am I doing something during gameplay that makes them attack or is it just chance?

Right now, I'm only focusing on fighting barbarians instead if building my Civ.

 

[Sisiutil]

I started a game on Noble, custom game with 4 Civs including myself. I started out well, slowly building my Civ, I had 3 cities.

I save the game, quit. Today I come back, and now, the barbarians just won't stop. At one point, I had 4 groups of them inside my BFC. They razed a few cottages and my wheat farm and my mine by the time I got rid of them. But now they just won't stop. Turn after turn a new group attacks.

Am I doing something during gameplay that makes them attack or is it just chance?

Right now, I'm only focusing on fighting barbarians instead if building my Civ.

Three things affect the amount of barbs you're facing:

1. The difficulty level. The higher the level, the more barbs you face.
2. The custom game settings. There are basically three settings: (a) no barbarians; (b) "normal" barbarians (for that difficulty level)--which is the default when neither custom setting is checked; and (c) raging barbarians (i.e. lots of the little buggers).
3. The map. Barbarians generate in any darkened area of the map, called the "fog"--both the pitch-black areas and the areas you've explored but can't currently "see". The only exception to the latter is areas where another civ has cultural borders.

If you chose a custom game with a normal sized map but only 4 civs (3 less than usual), it's no surprise you're getting more barbs than usual, since the lower number of civs means there's more fogged territory for them in which to spawn.

The solution is to build and send out a few military units called "fog-busters" to take up sentry posts outside your borders. Archers are particularly good for this task, since they're cheap and yet have several defensive advantages.

Fog-busters have three benefits:

1. With less fog, there's less territory for barbs to spawn.
2. When they do spawn, you'll see them coming and can move troops to intercept them.
3. Intercepting them may not be necessary. The barbs will likely try to attack your fog-busters instead. If these units are fortified on good defensive terrain with matching promotions (such as Archers on hills with Guerrilla promotions), then the barbs will probably die in the attack.

The main advantage of barbs is that they can be an excellent source of XPs and promotions for your early units so you can build up an army of promoted veterans.

 

[yanner39]

Three things affect the amount of barbs you're facing:

1. The difficulty level. The higher the level, the more barbs you face.
2. The custom game settings. There are basically three settings: (a) no barbarians; (b) "normal" barbarians (for that difficulty level)--which is the default when neither custom setting is checked; and (c) raging barbarians (i.e. lots of the little buggers).
3. The map. Barbarians generate in any darkened area of the map, called the "fog"--both the pitch-black areas and the areas you've explored but can't currently "see". The only exception to the latter is areas where another civ has cultural borders.

If you chose a custom game with a normal sized map but only 4 civs (3 less than usual), it's no surprise you're getting more barbs than usual, since the lower number of civs means there's more fogged territory for them in which to spawn.

The solution is to build and send out a few military units called "fog-busters" to take up sentry posts outside your borders. Archers are particularly good for this task, since they're cheap and yet have several defensive advantages.

Fog-busters have three benefits:

1. With less fog, there's less territory for barbs to spawn.
2. When they do spawn, you'll see them coming and can move troops to intercept them.
3. Intercepting them may not be necessary. The barbs will likely try to attack your fog-busters instead. If these units are fortified on good defensive terrain with matching promotions (such as Archers on hills with Guerrilla promotions), then the barbs will probably die in the attack.

The main advantage of barbs is that they can be an excellent source of XPs and promotions for your early units so you can build up an army of promoted veterans.

Thank you for this. Very good advice. I had read about the fog but I just have trouble putting everything together.

However, now, there are less barbarians, but they are weilding axes. I have research bronze working but do not have access to copper.

My archers and warriors are no match for the barbarians. Any other options to protect my cities.

As you can see, I'm not very good yet. And this is on Noble.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Thank you for this. Very good advice. I had read about the fog but I just have trouble putting everything together.

However, now, there are less barbarians, but they are weilding axes. I have research bronze working but do not have access to copper.

My archers and warriors are no match for the barbarians. Any other options to protect my cities.

As you can see, I'm not very good yet. And this is on Noble.

If you have horses build chariots (+100% vs. axes when attacking)
Unless you are playing a civ with a resourceless unique unit like the Dog Soldier 1 of your first 2-3 cities should always grab horses or bronze. If theres no horses or bronze getting Ironworking and an iron resource should be a priority. If theres no iron as well build a lot of archers and research Construction asap and go take some horses/bronze/iron off somebody else with an army of archers and catapults

 

[yanner39]

If you have horses build chariots (+100% vs. axes when attacking)
Unless you are playing a civ with a resourceless unique unit like the Dog Soldier 1 of your first 2-3 cities should always grab horses or bronze. If theres no horses or bronze getting Ironworking and an iron resource should be a priority. If theres no iron as well build a lot of archers and research Construction asap and go take some horses/bronze/iron off somebody else with an army of archers and catapults

Good stuff. Thank you.