Feel like im Bottle Necked for my performance in civ 4 and warlords

[shadow69034]

Hey guys,

Hey I figured I need some pointers for my poor playing. I normaly play online with a buddy of mine and I feel like im not getting the whole grasp of the game. I normally play under noble and I usually get about 5-6 cities going and specialize them.

Now my buddy just showed me the great feature of letting the automated citizens specialize on something and thats really helped me out, but I am more of a researcher i rely on a lot of wonders so im normally bismark. I normally dont go to war untill really late in the game like when i have infantry. Well my buddy is the complete opposite and goes to war early with the weak guy and then has like 11 cities.

Even though he has 11 and i have 5 i normally am tied with him scorewise. But I feel like when it comes to it i normally struggle with barbarians my people peak happieness and health pretty quick so my cities are at a low pop compared to everyone else. Maybe you guys can help me out a little bit ive been reading a lot of the tips and they are good. Any Advise?

 

[Cam_H]

Shadow,

For such a short post you've (probably inadvertantly) raised a lot of issues!

Victory

OK - for starters, you want to win the game! One of the great things about Civ is that there are so many ways to win, but in most cases, under standard playing conditions, you'll benefit from at least a medium sized empire, but ideally a large empire. Five cities with a view to expansion in the Modern Era is a 'challenging' approach at best and does not set you up well for any victory type.

Too big too fast

The team who created Civ4 have deliberately aimed to curtail the 'strategy' used by players of earlier versions of Civ of 'REXing' (rapid expansion of an empire by pumping out a stream of Settlers and grabbing any available land) by introducing high city maintenance costs. Generally speaking, if you have a dozen cities in your Classical Age empire, the city maintenance will really start to bite.

I think many of us have fallen into the trap of playing Rome, quickly researching to Iron Working, built a massive army of Praetorians, and gone rampaging through two or three neighbours only to find that our science has suddenly dropped to zero and the game is disbanding our units! We simply cannot afford the upkeep on all of those new cities that we've won, and the game is compelling us to reduce costs in any way it can.

This is where your buddy's approach runs the risk of becoming unstuck. They may have eleven cities, but can they afford to run them without sending the science rate down the toilet? At higher levels this becomes increasingly more difficult to manage.

On the other hand, the city upkeep dilemma does not mean 'avoid Classical Era warfare'. You will get promoted units - possibly even a Great General if you're playing Warlords. If you raze a few cities rather than keep them all (see below) you will be in a stronger position thanks to the plunder, and with a neighbour pushed back it will give you better developmental prospects.

Code of Laws and Currency

You can go on a pillaging and city seizing rampage with your army, but raze cities rather than keeping them and earning the rewards of your plunder. You can overcome maintenance costs through working lots of Cottages. You might have built The Colossus and have a strong economy through working coastal tiles. If you have lots of seaside cities The Great Lighthouse could be providing great relief for your financial predicament ...

... There are many ways to help you cope with a large early-game economy, but the Code of Laws and Currency technologies are very useful advances to addressing the city maintenance burden of a growing empire.

• Code of Laws: Allows cities to build Courthouses, and with enough Courthouses and a sufficiently sized empire you can build the Forbidden Palace, allows The Caste System civic that lets you run Specialist Merchants if you wish.

• Currency: Allows you to include gold in trades, provides a free Trade Route in every city, allows cities to build Markets for; extra gold and possibly happy faces and also allows you to add up to two Specialist Merchants.

With these two technologies under your belt you can start to expand with some confidence that you can maintain a balanced, vibrant, and growing economy.

Score

Unless you are going for a Time victory, the score is at best a general gauge on how you're going relative to the competition. For instance, it gives you points for building Wonders, but a lot of the Wonders in this game are really only of limited use unless you are embracing a particular strategy. Do not become unduly concerned with the Score - it can be a 'red herring' and does not take into account what strategy you intend to next launch yourself into.

Wonder Addiction

To my mind there are some excellent Global Wonders in this game, and some that are useful under certain conditions, and a few that I really doubt are ever worth the that they cost. You should not rely on building Wonders however; as you advance in levels they will become more-and-more difficult to secure and your neighbours are likely to become more-and-more threatening. Breaking builder-ish habits is important if you want to start playing the tougher levels. An extreme suggestion proposed by DaveMcW once was to play a game with iirc Barracks, Aqueducts and Courthouses being the only buildings at all! Something like that will compel you to re-evaluate your playstyle.


Hopefully these points are of some use to you. Keep reading the threads in CivFanatics as you have done. Best of luck!

 

[malekithe]

An extreme suggestion proposed by DaveMcW once was to play a game with iirc Barracks, Aqueducts and Courthouses being the only buildings at all!

Swap out the aqueducts for granaries and you've got a fairly straightforward recipe for a fast domination win. Leave out the courthouses and you're looking at a fast conquest.

 

[Cam_H]

Actually Malekithe ... it might have been Granaries and not Aqueducts! I should scratch around for that thread.

As noted in my 'trying not to be verbose and nonetheless being so' post #2, there are a lot of issues that Shadow touches on, each could attract a small essay.

 

[shadow69034]

Hey well i started a game last night and played for about 1.5 hours and i tried focusing on evening out my building some military and some specialized buildings.

I found myself looking and taking in my surroundings more like i was right by elephants so i went for construction which is nice because i also get the coloseums. Now ive pumped out some horse archers and elephant riders (i have no copper or iron in my cities yet ). I dont have any wonders yet or religion which is another topic for me i like founding religions in some games for the happyness and the culture but i dont like to adopt any religion, is this bad?

Anyway I am playing on warlord now which is where i start to strugle a little bit so far. Now I am going to have to attack someone which im trapped by my buddy and agustus ceaser so im going to have to attack agustus but ive been trying to get my army together and looked at the cart for power and im like tied for last so i dunno what im doing. Im sure in a little while i can get up there but im not getting a lot of tech or wonders and only have 1 good production city the rest(which is 2...yeah i only have 3 cities) are moslty going to have to be farms and cotteges.

 

[pigswill]

If you've got construction then focus mainly on catapults. As well as straight builds you also have the option to use slavery to whip production.

 

[malekithe]

...so i went for construction which is nice because i also get the coloseums.

There are several nice things about construction. The fact that it lets you build coliseums is not one of them.

 

[shadow69034]

Lol sorry like i said im not sure if i fully get the grasp on things but yeah i know the catapults will be nice since i dont have any copper so i have to have an all horsearcher and elephant with catapults army for agustus.

But also what about the religion thing is it ok to found them but not adopt? or should i adotp. Ive also been reading about a lot of people trade good things for a bunch of small things which i never really did i just researched everything and kept to myself.

 

[shadow69034]

Ok so i used the advise figured i would play on warlord and i also installed the better ai although im not sure if it worked. but my first 2 cities were production and then i got a gold and a research city and built an army. I went for currency early on and built an army in hopes of attacking. Well i built 2 good sized forces with about 5 horse archers 3 swordsman 3 axmen 3 pikemen and about 5 catapults each and attacked my neighbour (zulu). I took out 2 of his cities and got the capital but it was engulfed with his culture and it revolted back to him so i took it again and then made peace to rebuild to take him out completely.

I had been geting on Brenus' good side because he was another neighbor and strong. Well i start rebuilding and focusing my cities i still have 2 production only building army one build the heroic epic and used great general as the building(sorry forgot the name). My other 4 cities are split up to 2 research and 2 wealth. Now where i quit last night nepolean had just declared war on me hes to the right of zulu and im to the left (by the way i like inland sea on flat map). Now chartwise he has much more power but i have calvery and cannons. Im not going to try to attack him because i dont want his cities until i have zulu out of the way. Ive been trading a lot of good research for lesser and feel like im doing good.

Now like i said im not sure if the better ai worked because it doesnt say that in the score, but i feel like the computers are just dominating me. Sorry about the long posts i would just like to get better at this game but feel like im stuck.