Hello and..help me?

[zackgalagher]

So yeah i play Civ since 3 came out. And already played Civ4 before but then i stopped computing gaming a while but now i'm again playing.

So i need your help...if possible.

I've never beaten a game before since 3 and probably was chieftain mode..and yes i was a noob in these games until days ago.
When i came across with your forum and read some stuff and realized "oh wow im worse than a noob"
And then i also realized why i couldn't win in...Warlord.

So yeah before reading guides, your advices to others i only ready the topic "what is the best leader to start this game for the first time" or something like this.

Anyways i read a lil and i saw that chick from the Egyptian and Ghandi were the best choices for most of the people posting there so...yeah i started with her first.
After some tryouts with her i realized that she was good but something was missing and i always ended up in the bottom.
So i went to Ghandi...some said that his traits were good for war and .. financial? something that i like to do as well.
So yeah first and second try out were okay but after i realized.."Oh he is good for my style of play. But something was missing. And i couldn't win a tiny lil war.

So i started reading everything i could see that would help me, since war academy, your advices to others, some game samples, following some guides lines from that guide on the war academy that is for..erm..Noble and above? i think.

So i picked Elizabeth cause of that guide and following some guide lines from there and all that stuff i came around and tried to finally put to practice my kind of play style.
Everything went fine but..i got stuck and end up on the middle of the table and having the feeling that i could be raped by any AI..so yeah i will now say my style of play (or some kind of it)

- First city built on shoreline or any place with river if not try to build the second on those conditions
- Get a worker and put the warrior or scout to explore
- Get the barracks and train a warrior (btw i tick the No Barbarians so yea)
- Try to found at least one religion and sthen spread it all over my cities to enable Organized religion and then when needed..i think...Theocracy and finally Free religion (sometimes this last i do sometimes i dont depends..)
- So my first city spams some workers - 4 in total - and settlers -4 as well- to make this:
- First city research whore and GP farm
- Second city hybrid until is needed
- Third city production whore
- Forth city commerce and then most of the next cities goes to commerce being one or another productions as well
- So after getting everything up and running i rush to Liberalism first. Then rifling...siege weapons and finally tanks.
- And then well prepare myself to wage war.

But then i get stucked in this preparation where my steps are:
- Make small groups of mixed units like..5 rifleman, 3 cavalry 3 catapults and 2 trebuchets OR 5 cannon/artillery
- Put then on the end of my borders throughout its length (but in reality i end up with...say 5/6 small groups ready to enter AI borders)
- Meanwhile a city or 2 make my huge army that will clean or almost clean AI and conquer while i use my small groups to decoy and/or bombard cities (and i started using spies to make revolts and such in last game and helped me a bit)
- before launching the attack i try to make others wage war against the AI i want to conquer so that he would be busy putting troops on the others while i sneak attack and enconter few troops to counter me.

And i get stuck here...sometimes i get the groups and the huge one and i put others attacking the AI i want to vanquish or sometimes i just wage war myself when i see that i have better units and stuff...but i always get stucked and lose my troops even having rifles against swords and i can only manage 1 orr 2 cities if much.
And other problem is sometimes making the groups..my cities take too long to make them..or perhaps they take the same amount time but my eagerness to fight makes it look like they are taking forever?

Anyways i cant stop feeling that something is mssing or something i am doing wrong i could really use your help.
And yes i read everything and re-read but yeah...still cant see where is my mistake or lack of doing something.

Btw my kind of play is to wage war in middle game with gunpowder units or tanks but having the upper hand in number of cities or at least having 8 and have them well defended..and also having gold coming in.
So perhaps i like a lil bit of everything, instead of a full warmonger like some or more peaceful like others.
Perhaps is that?

Oh another information i have the mod/update "Varietas Delectat"

And yes you may call me noob

 

[MarigoldRan]

Provide screenshots, and saves.

Read guides for beginners. Sistuil's I think is the recommended one.

 

[zackgalagher]

Oh right. Ohh i read that one a bit..but was a lil confused. But yeah the saves i can provide the ones i made.

View attachment teste1.CivBeyondSwordSave

View attachment teste2.CivBeyondSwordSave

View attachment teste3.CivBeyondSwordSave

View attachment teste4.CivBeyondSwordSave

testing saves with ghandi and the girl (dont remember which one is which because well..i have a poor memory and its late in the night)


View attachment vananas.CivBeyondSwordSave

View attachment continuar.CivBeyondSwordSave

These two are for me the "best" of my tryouts i think one is still ghandi and the "Continuar" (which means to continue in portuguese") is my current game

 

[s.bernbaum]

What level are you playing on? I guess from what you say that it is Noble or lower but it would help if you specified.

If you are losing your battles even when you have superior forces, it sounds like you are not taking enough siege units with you. Since you launch your wars at gunpowder units or better, that would be cannons or artillery. You need to take a lot of it. I routinely have about half my stack, if it is smaller than say forty or so units, as artillery or cannon in that era. You need it to lower city defenses to zero before attacking and then expect to lose a few of them in each city, or for that matter against each field army, as you send them to attack first and inflict collateral damage on the defenders until the defenders are weak enough that your assault troops can win with no or nearly no losses. That's why siege units are often called "suicide siege". They are relatively cheap, so you use them up to preserve the stronger units.

It would also help if you posted a save game so people could see how you are playing and offer more specific advice.

EDIT: Cross post with your saves post.

Edit #2: I tried to look at your save but it uses a mod that I do not have. Unless you want advice about a particular mod, it is usually best to post a game save that does not use any mods. Otherwise, you can only get feedback from people who play that mod.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Build only warriors, and when you have 10+ warriors conquer the world. Win at 2000 BC.

 

[zackgalagher]

Ohhh yes i know all that stuff about the siege units and stuff...

Damn i think my english sometimes is confusing.

But you are right about the mod i should make a game without it .. i guess im really not used to these.

Anyways my main problem is not knowing if my cities are building fast or if i should specialize more to maximize my troop outcome.
Or if i should get slower on the tech...even with better troops i feel sometimes that i should have more? or wage war sooner even with almost the same units..

Oh god i cant explain better >-< anyways i will make a save without the mod and then post and...im sorry for my noobish...or super noobish stuff

Edit: Yes i play warlord or noble but mostly warlord. Since i cant play well...i do not venture further...

 

[junovalkyrie]

Disclaimer: I've only recently started playing Civ IV myself (just won my first monarch-level campaign), so you may want to take my advice with a grain of salt.

In addition to what others have said, it can help to follow other games and see how other people play. It's one thing to read general advice like "diversify your military units" and "only go into war with a clear goal" and such and another entirely to see what this means in action. For example, I've been looking over this single-player game by kossin (and some people who shadowed him with their own strategies) and this account of a pitboss game by Sulla over the last couple of days. They've already helped me to improve my early-game micromanagement and war strategies, even though the latter game is multiplayer (which is a very different environment from SP) and most of what they cover are things that I already knew in a broad, conceptual sense.

I don't have the mod you're using, so I can't look at your savegames, but here's some general advice based on what you've said:

Everything went fine but..i got stuck and end up on the middle of the table and having the feeling that i could be raped by any AI..so yeah i will now say my style of play (or some kind of it)

- First city built on shoreline or any place with river if not try to build the second on those conditions
- Get a worker and put the warrior or scout to explore
- Get the barracks and train a warrior (btw i tick the No Barbarians so yea)
- Try to found at least one religion and sthen spread it all over my cities to enable Organized religion and then when needed..i think...Theocracy and finally Free religion (sometimes this last i do sometimes i dont depends..)
- So my first city spams some workers - 4 in total - and settlers -4 as well- to make this:
- First city research whore and GP farm
- Second city hybrid until is needed
- Third city production whore
- Forth city commerce and then most of the next cities goes to commerce being one or another productions as well
- So after getting everything up and running i rush to Liberalism first. Then rifling...siege weapons and finally tanks.
- And then well prepare myself to wage war.

In general, there's no one strategy that will work for every map. You want to look at your surroundings, consider your neighbors and map settings, and be adaptable. Some things that may help:

- Barracks are nice, but most of the time your priority in the early game should be to explore, get a sense of the land around you (so you can plan where to place your settlers), and expand. Unless you're embarking on an early military campaign or fear that an attack is coming, you can generally put barracks off until a little later. This was something I did a lot early on, too, wanting to build barracks early so that my military units would be powerful from the start. But I've found that using the same production to build an extra scout, warrior, or worker often goes much further in the early game. (Also, with barbarians and goody huts on, your early units will often earn as much or more experience just by exploring anyway.)
- With regard to founding a religion, I found that my early game improved a lot when I stopped trying to do this every game. It can provide some benefits like culture and happiness boosts early on, but it can also come with a lot of downsides, especially in terms of diplomacy, unless you know what you're doing and devote a lot of resources to spreading it. In general, I treat founding a religion as an all-or-nothing affair, and I prefer to develop in other areas, wait and see what the other civs around me are doing, and use religion as a tool of diplomacy (e.g., adopting the religion of civs I want to be friendly with).
- It sounds like you could be more flexible in the types of cities you're shooting for. Yes, you'll probably want to build at least one commerce city, GP farm, and production center eventually, but the order in which you found them should be based on the conditions of the map and where you can settle easily, not a rigid set of instructions that you decide on before even seeing what kind of land is available.

War isn't my strong point, so I'll let others answer that, but one question:

And other problem is sometimes making the groups..my cities take too long to make them..or perhaps they take the same amount time but my eagerness to fight makes it look like they are taking forever?

What civics are you running? Slavery is generally considered quite useful throughout the early eras because it allows you to trade population and (temporarily) happiness for quick production - so if you have cities with granaries and a good amount of food, you can pump out a lot of units quickly as needed ("whipping") and switch to specialists and working other tiles as needed to keep yourself from going over your happiness cap until the unhappiness from whipping goes away. This also gives you more flexibility in case of a surprise attack. See another civ preparing for war near your borders? Switch all of your cities to producing military units, whip them up in the next turn or two, and you'll be much better-prepared when he declares war.

Edit: One other piece of advice, very general but probably one of the most easily-overlooked things for a beginner. Long-term planning is good, but you've also got to think about the short term. A short-term advantage can often "snowball" into a much greater long-term advantage than, say, shooting straight for liberalism because of the long-term advantage it provides. Many of the problems I experienced when I first started playing came from thinking too much of the future and not enough of the present when planning my techs.

 

[zackgalagher]

Disclaimer: I've only recently started playing Civ IV myself (just won my first monarch-level campaign), so you may want to take my advice with a grain of salt.

In addition to what others have said, it can help to follow other games and see how other people play. It's one thing to read general advice like "diversify your military units" and "only go into war with a clear goal" and such and another entirely to see what this means in action. For example, I've been looking over this single-player game by kossin (and some people who shadowed him with their own strategies) and this account of a pitboss game by Sulla over the last couple of days. They've already helped me to improve my early-game micromanagement and war strategies, even though the latter game is multiplayer (which is a very different environment from SP) and most of what they cover are things that I already knew in a broad, conceptual sense.

I don't have the mod you're using, so I can't look at your savegames, but here's some general advice based on what you've said:



In general, there's no one strategy that will work for every map. You want to look at your surroundings, consider your neighbors and map settings, and be adaptable. Some things that may help:

- Barracks are nice, but most of the time your priority in the early game should be to explore, get a sense of the land around you (so you can plan where to place your settlers), and expand. Unless you're embarking on an early military campaign or fear that an attack is coming, you can generally put barracks off until a little later. This was something I did a lot early on, too, wanting to build barracks early so that my military units would be powerful from the start. But I've found that using the same production to build an extra scout, warrior, or worker often goes much further in the early game. (Also, with barbarians and goody huts on, your early units will often earn as much or more experience just by exploring anyway.)
- With regard to founding a religion, I found that my early game improved a lot when I stopped trying to do this every game. It can provide some benefits like culture and happiness boosts early on, but it can also come with a lot of downsides, especially in terms of diplomacy, unless you know what you're doing and devote a lot of resources to spreading it. In general, I treat founding a religion as an all-or-nothing affair, and I prefer to develop in other areas, wait and see what the other civs around me are doing, and use religion as a tool of diplomacy (e.g., adopting the religion of civs I want to be friendly with).
- It sounds like you could be more flexible in the types of cities you're shooting for. Yes, you'll probably want to build at least one commerce city, GP farm, and production center eventually, but the order in which you found them should be based on the conditions of the map and where you can settle easily, not a rigid set of instructions that you decide on before even seeing what kind of land is available.

War isn't my strong point, so I'll let others answer that, but one question:



What civics are you running? Slavery is generally considered quite useful throughout the early eras because it allows you to trade population and (temporarily) happiness for quick production - so if you have cities with granaries and a good amount of food, you can pump out a lot of units quickly as needed ("whipping") and switch to specialists and working other tiles as needed to keep yourself from going over your happiness cap until the unhappiness from whipping goes away. This also gives you more flexibility in case of a surprise attack. See another civ preparing for war near your borders? Switch all of your cities to producing military units, whip them up in the next turn or two, and you'll be much better-prepared when he declares war.

Perhaps you are right in some points i do go by what others say "you must have one goal in mind etc" So it shortens perhaps my point of view. About the religion i tried one game no caring about to found one and it was rather pleasing and then tried one to found one to see the differences and yes..probably founding one is not really something i should aim for.

about the barracks well yes picking that thing of general idea "have one goal" made me build barracks pretty soon.

And my civics...well to be honest im like those people who are an hard shell when comes to change the favs. So most of the time i have:

Heriditary rule
Vassalage
Free market (but this really depends on my mood)
Organized religion to have those +25%

But i think i said that i read a lot before posting and before making tests but then again perhaps i read the wrong ones to my kind of level and style...

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

As I said you don't actually need to be a better player until Monarch, you can warrior rush everyone, and transition into Axes to get a conquest.

 

[Seraiel]

Noble is winnable by chopping alone, I've won Prince by that. Maybe it's not the best advice Zero and I are giving you, but it works.

If you can't win Noble, my suggestion is that you lack something very basic like Slavery or chopping. Just try the following:

Tech BW
Settle city near Copper
Road up the Copper and the City (you should have 1.5-2 Workers / City)
Chop every tree you find and produce "Axemen"
Whip as many Axemen as you have Population that doesn't work Food

If you want it even more simple, you can stick to Zeros advice and not even do that but only build Warriors and destroy everyone with them, don't try to tech, don't try to play beautiful, war.

Gonna have a look at the saves now.

[EDIT]

Can't look at the saves because you play with some weird Mod.

 

[zackgalagher]

Today i'm gonna make a save with all the information you all gave and try to polish a lil more my gaming style.
And i will do it without that mod

As for Zero advice it seems nice indeed but i wanted to build my own strategy on lower levels and go up slowly step by step or in the case from warlord to noble..noble to monarch..and so on.

Yes a rush sounds cool but i like to play for a good time being 1 or 2 hours planning stuff but i will still make some rushes to relieve the stress of the day nonetheless

EDIT: I would like to start this game and post some screenshots and saves while people comment and help me go forward with tips. Should i continue on this post or..where should i post? I've saw two topics where i could post but i'm a lil..afraid of posting on the wrong one.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

You're never going to get any where if you don't understand how to war properly man. Beating higher difficulties will be impossible for you. There is absolutely 0 planning needed until IMM so don't bother, by the time you get to IMM you will understand the game enough and not have to take 1-2 hours planning. That 2 hours now could be spent playing another Civ game and making you better with experience.

 

[Ghpstage]

Based on the 2 standard BTS saves you posted (1 and 2 for anyone else) theres a lot going wrong.

In the second save in paticular you have failed to settle enough cities and have spaced out the ones you have too much.
A good general rule is to have at least one food resource for every cty and at least one city per food resource, in your game you have 8 fish resources going unclaimed by any city with a couple unimproved too, 2 pigs, 2 clams, 2 corns, a rice and a grassland cow that are all unclaimed by any city.
This is proving devastating to your empires strength before even considering the other good tiles you could be working if you settled them (gems, coal, iron and a ton of grassland!).

I suspect the same is true in the first game, but as you allowed yourself to get boxed in by expanding like a snail its harder to see.

The civics your running are a mess too.

• Vasalage is rarely very useful, Bureacracy, Free Speech or Nationalism blow it away 99%+ of the time. in the second game free speech would probably be the best to run.
• Serfdom is just about never worth using.

All the early religion founding is severely hampering your early growth too.

 

[Cort Haus]

There is absolutely 0 planning needed until IMM so don't bother

This might be your experience but I'm not sure that everybody would agree with this.

Perhaps some playstyles need less planning than others, and some players like to do more planning than others, or need to.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

This might be your experience but I'm not sure that everybody would agree with this.

Perhaps some playstyles need less planning than others, and some players like to do more planning than others, or need to.

Ok well you should plan out your wars and how you are going to get to the units to war with a little, but planning for 1-2 hours is funking ridiculous. You are over thinking it and making it harder than need be.

 

[Seraiel]

From what I've read, I conclude the following:

You think too much about tactics, without having even mastered the basics of Civ.
You wait for too long, war does not start with Rifles, it starts with Warriors (or Axes) .
You try to play beautiful, whithout being effective.
You like taking pictures.
You're very confused and very emotional .
You're willing to learn.

I'm gonna give 1 thing to you today to learn, and that is simple: Civ is not a game of beauty, it's not great for taking pictures, it's bad for your emotions and it's very simple: It's a game about , and / / and after that and . It's a game of Units, with which you try to conquer the wrong decisions (buildings) from others. The way to get there, is good understanding of game-basics (you have to learn a lot there) for Noble, a good understanding of war-tactics (for every difficulty lvl) , good Worker-Management (Monarch and above) , good Macro (up to Immortal), GPs and Cuirrassiers (Deity) and finally gambles (HoF, trying to beat Deity with a fast finish date / high score) . As I learned today, Micro is not needed, though it surely helps a lot on all lvls. Just take at home the lesson on what Civ is about, focus on that, and you'll beat Noble today. After that, again focus on the basics, and you'll reach Monarch this weak. Then finally have some fun on Emperor and Immortal, and win more of it / again loose it on Deity .

GL, Sera

 

[ahcos]

Micro is what turns a loss from a bad start into a win... actually, if you want to win on Deity level constantly and have learned all the other stuff, it's all that matters. Not saying it will win you games alone, but it will certainly give you an edge in the tricky games.

 

[zackgalagher]

From what I've read, I conclude the following:

You think too much about tactics, without having even mastered the basics of Civ.
You wait for too long, war does not start with Rifles, it starts with Warriors (or Axes) .
You try to play beautiful, whithout being effective.
You like taking pictures.
You're very confused and very emotional .
You're willing to learn.

I'm gonna give 1 thing to you today to learn, and that is simple: Civ is not a game of beauty, it's not great for taking pictures, it's bad for your emotions and it's very simple: It's a game about , and / / and after that and . It's a game of Units, with which you try to conquer the wrong decisions (buildings) from others. The way to get there, is good understanding of game-basics (you have to learn a lot there) for Noble, a good understanding of war-tactics (for every difficulty lvl) , good Worker-Management (Monarch and above) , good Macro (up to Immortal), GPs and Cuirrassiers (Deity) and finally gambles (HoF, trying to beat Deity with a fast finish date / high score) . As I learned today, Micro is not needed, though it surely helps a lot on all lvls. Just take at home the lesson on what Civ is about, focus on that, and you'll beat Noble today. After that, again focus on the basics, and you'll reach Monarch this weak. Then finally have some fun on Emperor and Immortal, and win more of it / again loose it on Deity .

GL, Sera

Well you couldn't be more right in what i am while playing this game.
And yes i'm more than willing to learn.
Well for the others...yes i did not have mastered the basics (shame on me) and for the rest well, after reading so much it confuses me more than actually teach me how to start as a first timer on this game.
But after seeing all this i will try once again to play with the basics in mind.
And then post my save.

Thank you very much for your advice and your patience to a newbie

 

[ChanceDanger]

Of course, another thing that hasn't been mentioned is that some stacks don't have to be mixed defensively. While you do want a diverse stack for something like catapults/trebuchets/cannons with 1-2 counters of each type and city attackers, when you are using lots of mounted troops like chariots, Horse Archers, ect. you don't really want to pair them with something that slows them down. You've got to channel you inner Ghengis and kill with speed and numbers.

 

[zackgalagher]

Of course, another thing that hasn't been mentioned is that some stacks don't have to be mixed defensively. While you do want a diverse stack for something like catapults/trebuchets/cannons with 1-2 counters of each type and city attackers, when you are using lots of mounted troops like chariots, Horse Archers, ect. you don't really want to pair them with something that slows them down. You've got to channel you inner Ghengis and kill with speed and numbers.

Well yes that makes sense, but even if means losing a good portion of troops cause of the high defensive bonus that the city has?