Condensed tips for beginners?

[Sisiutil]

ZeekLTK: You may want to post a saved game file to get more detailed analysis--maybe even in its own thread. However, based upon your description, I'd offer the following suggestions:

• Isolation is challenging. It sounds like you may have been completely isolated until Astronomy--was that the case? If not for you, for some of the other civs? That can slow down the overall global rate of technical progress, as civs will have fewer tech trading partners early on. Tech trading greatly accelerates the rate of technological advancement. Isolation also makes it impossible to wage wars pre-Astronomy, to obtain resources you need through trade to grow your cities, and so on. You may wish to abandon games where you find yourself isolated until you achieve more success with standard games where you star with 3-4 other civs nearby.
• Waiting until Rifles to start your first war is a long, long time to wait. The isolation, I assume, made an early war a non-starter.
• A slider at 80% to 100% is not necessarily the way to win the game. I've won games where the slider remained at 50% or lower the whole way through. Land is power--or, more specifically, the more cities you own, the more powerful you will be (generally). 25 cities at 50% research will beat 6 cities at 80% or higher. Easily.
• As for your bigger question, how to focus on both war and peace, the answer is simple: don't. When you go to war, focus on the war--throw the full resources of your entire civ behind it. During a war, your gold per turn (GPT) will drop and drag the slider down with it. Let it. Once the war is over and your units are back within your (new) territory, your new cities become productive (and reduce their maintenance costs with courthouses, etc.), and your new resources kick in, you should slingshot past your opponents in terms of score, technology, wealth, and so on.

 

[cabert]

As Sisiutil said, don't focus on both military and peace.
However you should (almost always) :
- have a few production cities
- have at least one of those build military non-stop, even when you're focusing on peace.

 

[ZeekLTK]

Thanks for the tips. I was looking through some other posts in this thread and a lot of people talk about cottages. I hardly ever build any because it seems like I can't get my cities to grow unless I have my citizens on tiles that have 2+ food (farms and water with lighthouse) and usually I'll have a huge hammer spot or two (some type of mine with 3+ hammers but 0-1 food) that I have citizens on so that it doesn't take forever to build stuff... so even if I do build cottages I find myself not using them because I just don't have enough citizens to take away from the other tiles that I feel like are more important.

So I really don't know how/when to use them. I would like to use them to get the money bonus but I just can't seem to find a way to justify putting someone on them because it will either slow my city's growth or slow down production. I always think "ok, when the pop goes up one more then I'll use the cottage" - but then it goes up and there's another 2+ food spot to go on so I'm like "well... I'll have him go on that to let it go up one more" and then it gets to the point where I have 12+ citizens but I STILL can't get anyone on the cottage because I have them all working food/hammer tiles to keep the city not starving/producing things quickly.

 

[Silu]

I'll have him go on that to let it go up one more" and then it gets to the point where I have 12+ citizens but I STILL can't get anyone on the cottage because I have them all working food/hammer tiles to keep the city not starving/producing things quickly.

Try having some cities produce things very quickly and some cities producing very slowly. For the latter use the whip when necessary.

 

[cabert]

well, all the while you don't work your cottages they don't mature.
I find myself working cottages asap in every game, even when I have pyramids.

In the early game (before alphabet and currency), commerce is almost the only way to pay your maintenance, and IMHO the best way to tech.

 

[Sisiutil]

Thanks for the tips. I was looking through some other posts in this thread and a lot of people talk about cottages. I hardly ever build any because it seems like I can't get my cities to grow unless I have my citizens on tiles that have 2+ food (farms and water with lighthouse) and usually I'll have a huge hammer spot or two (some type of mine with 3+ hammers but 0-1 food) that I have citizens on so that it doesn't take forever to build stuff... so even if I do build cottages I find myself not using them because I just don't have enough citizens to take away from the other tiles that I feel like are more important.

So I really don't know how/when to use them. I would like to use them to get the money bonus but I just can't seem to find a way to justify putting someone on them because it will either slow my city's growth or slow down production. I always think "ok, when the pop goes up one more then I'll use the cottage" - but then it goes up and there's another 2+ food spot to go on so I'm like "well... I'll have him go on that to let it go up one more" and then it gets to the point where I have 12+ citizens but I STILL can't get anyone on the cottage because I have them all working food/hammer tiles to keep the city not starving/producing things quickly.

Try to always include at least one food resource tile in every city's fat cross. This is they key to allowing you to grow your city while working low-food high-hammer tiles and growth-neutral 2F tiles (such as grassland tiles with cottages). Some tips:

• Look for seafood (fish, clams, crabs) grains (rice, corn, wheat, especially with fresh water for +1F from irrigation), and livestock (pigs, sheep, deer, cows).
• Flood plains are attractive as they provide +1 food (+2 with a farm), but I prefer to put cottages on them because of the +1 commerce for being next to a river. (I also like cottaging riverside grassland tiles for this reason.) In the absence of a food resource tile, however, one or more farmed flood plains will do nicely; they provide as much food as a non-irrigated rice or wheat tile.
• Make growth-enhancing buildings like granaries and lighthouses a priority (which means their enabling techs, Pottery and Sailing, are priorities).
• Other priority techs for growth are Civil Service and Biology. Civil Service allows you to chain-irrigate tiles not located adjacent to fresh water, and Biology gives you +1F on every farmed tile.
• City specialization also helps. Decide what a city will focus on: specialists? commerce (cottages)? production? This makes your decision-making regarding which tiles to work (not to mention what to build) easier. A specialist city will work a lot of high-food tiles, a commerce city will work cottages, a production city will work high-hammer tiles. But all of them require a food surplus to grow, and this is where the surplus food tiles are important.

 

[tuore]

Do you have any tips on EARLY warfare? I've been playing BTS with warlord difficulty, and it seems that i only win wars when i'm using tanks (meaning that when i'm at about 1900's), and i usually run into lots of wars. How many troops should i produce etc.?

 

[adrianj]

@ZeekLTK - If you have a save game from approximately just after the wars were finished, we might be able to offer some detailed advice on how to switch from your military machine back to a monster researcher.

The way you played sounds like it was very good. Focussing on war and peace at the same time is often not very effective. But the way you peacefully worked up to Rifles and then went into war mode sounds like you did very well.

Perhaps a question you might have asked yourself much earlier was: What victory am I actually going for here? Had you known all along that you were aiming to go to space you might have put more effort into developing cottages for example. Or if you wished to pursue domination, then claiming a vassal or two might have been suitable and then teching as far as Artillery. You would be surprised to find how well a large force of rifles + cannon/artillery deals with even a more advanced enemy.

Did you develop a 'Super Science City'? In almost all the games I play, I find that this one city (Oxford Uni + other science buildings + as many cottages as possible + bureaucracy if it is my capital) will account for over half of my research for most of the game.

Edit: Sorry guys, I was reading a whole page behind in the thread - and now see that this post was well and truly answered already

 

[adrianj]

Do you have any tips on EARLY warfare? I've been playing BTS with warlord difficulty, and it seems that i only win wars when i'm using tanks (meaning that when i'm at about 1900's), and i usually run into lots of wars. How many troops should i produce etc.?

Practice.

Try playing a Pangaea map, research Bronze Working ASAP, settle only 2 or 3 cities making sure to claim copper, build enough workers to get maximum production from these cities* (ie, mines, and enough farms so that you have the food to work them), build a barracks and start amassing Axes.

* Very important, never neglect workers.

This strategy may not work in every game, and you may find that after you have killed 1 or 2 or more of your neighbours that you are woefully behind in technology, but I'm sure you will learn a lot from the experience.

In general, I think the trick is to assess
1. How much room do I have to peacefully expand into GOOD land.
2. How close are my neighbours.
3. Which era of the game will I have the best advantage in a war. Typically the further away your opponents, the later you'll start the war.
4. Be specific with your tech path to get you the units of that era, and then go into full war mode.

The eras can be broadly defined as which units will be doing your fighting:
Warriors/Quechua only - very very early rush, but amazingly effective as Inca
Axes/early unique units - Basically what I described above, and is sometimes made easier if you have a handy early unique unit, eg, Persian Immortals, Sumerian Vultures, etc.
Horse Archers - Especially useful against an enemy who doesn't have copper or iron, and can't build spears. Plus they move faster.
Axes + catapults - Siege units may make wars last a little longer with having to move them up, knock down the defenses, then attack. But your losses will be significantly less. Don't forget to have some spears if the enemy has horses.
Maces + catapults/trebuchets (+ elephants if you have ivory) - as above but better.
Knights - Same as horse archers, but by this point you might be facing longbows, so in my experience not quite as effective.
Rifles + cannon - I think one of the most effective combinations in the game. With a large enough army of these you can even wage a war on an enemy with infantry. Mix in some cavalry if you like.
Rifles + Artillery - I find that the step up from Cannon to Artillery is much more useful than the step up from Rifles to Infantry. Possibly just my opinion.
Beyond that you're into the late game, and early warfare definitely does not apply

Having said all this, early warfare is only relevant if it fits in with your overal game plan. If you are pursuing a peaceful victory like Culture, Apostolic Palace vote, or Diplomacy you might not need to go to war at all. For something like Space, it's equally important to know when you have achieved your goals from war and call it quits, so that you can move back into research mode.

 

[Shafi]

Do you have any tips on EARLY warfare? I've been playing BTS with warlord difficulty, and it seems that i only win wars when i'm using tanks (meaning that when i'm at about 1900's), and i usually run into lots of wars. How many troops should i produce etc.?

To start with pick a civ with a very early UU and build around 6-7 of them as fast as possible, this means you need to head straight for the required tech, hook up the resource, build a barrack and chop forests while building the UU, to make it happen asap. Once you have maybe 7 or so units on noble and below head to your opponents capital and attack ...

This is just to get you started, actually attacking in the BC's is the easiest, due to the lower number of defenses + low cultural deenses.

Once you get the hang of it, well try regular chariot and regular axeman for rushing, these are the most commonly used rush units.

 

[ZeekLTK]

Thanks, I think my problem was mainly that my capital was really my only good city (well, when I conquered Madrid that was also a great city but it was pretty late in the game) and all my other cities kinda sucked. They weren't able to build things fast so I pretty much just ignored them and then occasionally used slavery to rush a project every 20-30 turns or so.

I didn't really use specialists, so I think I should try doing that in the future. I had one city on a one-square island so it was surrounded by water. I just had everyone working water tiles to grow it - I probably should have used this to turn people into scientists huh? Instead I was building things that took 90+ turns at this place and basically just ignored it because of that.

Another one I had was on the coast with 4 fur spots next to it, one hill (no metals), and 2 desert. This town also struggled to build anything, so I mostly ignored it and occasionally slave rushed a few things. What should I have done with this one?

 

[Solon70]

I have a couple questions that have nothing to do with each other:

1) Are random AIs really random? It seems like there are certain civs I see in virtually every game and others that never ever show up. Or is it just my mind finding patterns in genuine randomness?

2) Is there a guide or post that will help steer me on the right track to pursue a religious victory? I've never had one and I've never even really tried. Do people backdoor it the way you might backdoor a UN victory, or is there a more direct strategy to win through actual diplomacy?

 

[Sisiutil]

I have a couple questions that have nothing to do with each other:

1) Are random AIs really random? It seems like there are certain civs I see in virtually every game and others that never ever show up. Or is it just my mind finding patterns in genuine randomness?

2) Is there a guide or post that will help steer me on the right track to pursue a religious victory? I've never had one and I've never even really tried. Do people backdoor it the way you might backdoor a UN victory, or is there a more direct strategy to win through actual diplomacy?

1. Yes, it's random, though I agree that sometimes I will see the same faces over and over again. To see more variation: (a) play on a larger map (b) use the Custom Game menu to add more civs, and/or (b) play random personalities, so even if you see the same face, he/she is not behaving the same.
2. A diplomatic win via the Apostolic Palace is pretty cheesy. However, if you want to see an example of how it's done, follow the link in my sig to the ALC bullpen and then go have a look at Game #18 (won a AP diplo victory as Isabella of Spain).

 

[tuore]

Some questions about CivIV:
1. Is it better to manually place and build improvements with workers, or is it as good to just automate the workers?
2. Should i have some cities that constantly build only soldiers, and if yes, then how many (in percentage) should it approximately be?
3. It always seems that another nations' cities have higher culture, although after i pass 1500, i've got almost always higher culture. What should i build to increase early culture?
4. How should i set up the "characters" in the cities (citizens, merchants, etc.)?
5. Why are quests so rare? Of my all games (probably over 15), only about 4 have had quests (build libraries etc.).
6. What do i need to do so that it's possible for me to put the resolution "Religious Victory" in AP? Does everyone else have the same religion?

 

[Silu]

Some questions about CivIV:
1. Is it better to manually place and build improvements with workers, or is it as good to just automate the workers?
2. Should i have some cities that constantly build only soldiers, and if yes, then how many (in percentage) should it approximately be?
3. It always seems that another nations' cities have higher culture, although after i pass 1500, i've got almost always higher culture. What should i build to increase early culture?
4. How should i set up the "characters" in the cities (citizens, merchants, etc.)?
5. Why are quests so rare? Of my all games (probably over 15), only about 4 have had quests (build libraries etc.).
6. What do i need to do so that it's possible for me to put the resolution "Religious Victory" in AP? Does everyone else have the same religion?

1. Manual is usually better.

2. A baseline can be 1 in every 4-6 cities semi-constantly building military. Varies a lot with the situation.

3. Early game wonders are the biggest contributor to culture. You shouldn't worry about culture really except in your border cities or if going for a cultural victory

4. These "characters" are commonly called specialists. Appoint them according to what's good for the city (many modifiers like academy+library+university make scientists good), what's good for the empire (if in need of research, use scientists) and which great people you want. Scientists are by far the most common specialist to use since there's always need for research and -modifiers are the most common.

5. It's random, sometimes you can get 4 quests in 1 game. Most of them are not worth doing, however. Some exceptions include the Castle quest, Colosseum quest with Statue of Zeus, Musketman quest and Swordsman quest.

6. Every Civ needs to have at least 1 city that has the AP religion and no single Civ can have over 75% votes. Their state religion doesn't matter except for the fact that the AP religion followers have double votes.

 

[tuore]

3. Early game wonders are the biggest contributor to culture. You shouldn't worry about culture really except in your border cities or if going for a cultural victory


6. Every Civ needs to have at least 1 city that has the AP religion and no single Civ can have over 75% votes. Their state religion doesn't matter except for the fact that the AP religion followers have double votes.

3. I usually go for cultural or space, i'm not good at warfare.

6. Now i got confused. So if i build the AP and my state religion is Islam, everyone else must have at least one city with Islamic religion to allow me to suggest for a religious victory?

 

[Silu]

6. Now i got confused. So if i build the AP and my state religion is Islam, everyone else must have at least one city with Islamic religion to allow me to suggest for a religious victory?

Correct, assuming your state religion was Islam the turn you finished AP. Changing your state religion later does not change the "AP religion". A usual cheesy way to win with AP is to change to an unused religion right when you complete AP (possibly changing out again right after) and spread that religion very sparingly (1 to most Civs, a lot to your best friends to overcome the max 75% constraint).

When going for a cultural vic you shouldn't pay much heed to early culture. Getting a lot of culture modifiers (=many religions) or culture corps for massive mid-late-game culture production is what counts. 2 or 10 culture per turn early game has no effect when your cities get 500+ culture per turn later.

 

[Solon70]

Correct, assuming your state religion was Islam the turn you finished AP. Changing your state religion later does not change the "AP religion". A usual cheesy way to win with AP is to change to an unused religion right when you complete AP (possibly changing out again right after) and spread that religion very sparingly (1 to most Civs, a lot to your best friends to overcome the max 75% constraint).

If you spread the AP religion "a lot to your best friends," then won't one of your best friends be your rival for the AP vote, and vote for themselves instead of you?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

To be your rival they need to switch in the AP religion... so you want to spread it a bit to have more votes, but not too much

 

[Solon70]

But do you need to stay in the AP religion yourself to win? Seems like it would be hard to get the AI to vote for you without shared religion...