Hello. I have some specific questions about playing Civ4.

[Larwin]

On this map I feel I can build maybe 10 cities if I focus on expansion til there's only AI land left. Should I plan my strategy for an earlier win or shoot for a rifleman or musketman and cannon win? the two AI have cities on the opposite end of the sea. And after playing this map a couple times I noticed the AI wasn't building hardly any coastal cities maybe because there wasn't enough coastal resources.

I think I read somewhere that coastal cities were easier to defend not 100% sure on this.

Also I think I need a wonder plan if I'm going for a later win. I would like to build pyramids if possible and might use the police state civic when i start the war. Or I might possibly tech til I can get communism?. This might come to late in the game for a win and I might want to tech other things. could someone post what wonders could be for a good focus for the stage of the game I'm thinking about. I'm not sure about oracle and stonehenge. Do I mostly want these If I want a holy city? maybe I need to get a city dedicated to producing missionaries too? This holy city will help fund my army I plan to build later.

One wonder plan I read before was: Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, Great Library, Hanging Gardens(helps health i think), Parthenon, National Epic, Globe Theatre(for happiness), Maybe add Oxford University but not sure I need it for a rifleman victory.

I think if I have at least 1 or two cities or 1 less than the AI before the War I will reach the Techs before them for riflemen and cannons.

Any ideas what my starting army should be when I declare war? I basically want to be able to take my first few cities with 1 attack before the AI starts building more defenders. I was thinking of launching 5 riflemen and 5 cannons at each city and combining leftover troops for later citys.

 

[Larwin]

Also should I capture or raze? I had problems with this before running out of money. And also if I raze the cities the AI seems to sneak by me with a settler and build another city in its place. Maybe I just need better coverage with my units maybe doing something like stacks of 2 rifleman and 2 cannons for a wider spread? I find I lose more units If I send them out by themselves. Adding Knights to fill in the gaps might be a good idea if I dont have calvery yet.

 

[Larwin]

Another thing i wanted to add is that the AI main resource cities are at the far end of the map. Should I send a stack or two of Knights or calvary after the resources to pillage and hope they dont get killed before they reach it because I got about 4 or 5 cities to raze/capture before I get there. On this map I have Iron and the AI has copper. I had to wait til Ironworking to produce early axemen and spearmen. Or maybe I going about this all wrong and should be at war a lot longer than I was thinking. I do have one source of horses on my side of the map maybe I can start an earlier war and send chariots after the copper and any other resource that will give the AI an advantage. Maybe even plan on capturing workers from this particular AI lol.

 

[Ghpstage]

Eventually you'll have to get over this idea of building lots of wonders, grabbing lots of cities and having a large army, you can't have it all .

Seems that if I can build at least 70% of the early wonders and have more cities than the AI I can start keeping ahead of them in tech.

This is a strange observation, at noble you should be able to utterly wipe the floor with the AI tech rate with fewer cities and no wonders at all. Something is clearly wrong with the basics of both your strategies and more importantly, your empire management.
The only thing I can think of that wouldmass random wonderspamming help your tech rate drastically is Great People, and if this is the case you must be completely ignoring specialists.

Also I think I need a wonder plan if I'm going for a later win. I would like to build pyramids if possible and might use the police state civic when i start the war. Or I might possibly tech til I can get communism?. This might come to late in the game for a win and I might want to tech other things.

Don't build the Pyramids for anything but Representation, anything else just leaves it as a huge waste of .
Coimmunism doesn't come all that late with a decent tech rate, though I think you may be confusding it with Facism if you want Police State.... which is only a situational civic anyway.

EDIT - Just to be clear theres a big difference between world wonder and national wonders, most of the times people mention 'wonders' on these forums they are refering strictly to world wonders such as the Pyramids. National wonders like the National Epic and Oxford are very good builds.

The fastest way to get accurate and effective help is to post some saves of a game or two, preferably a starting save and ones around 1000BC and 1AD.

 

[Larwin]

Are we talking about the free ones or the ones that you take from your city population to produce more science shields or money? and if I used the ones that come from population what size should my cities be before I start setting them up. And can I run these specialists and do well tech wise without building a few wonders? I only looked at the articles on this a couple times I not sure if I understand it fully I might need to look at it again. I was thinking specialists were for more advanced games lol or when cities were a lot larger.

I think I need to have mostly farms in my BFC to run SE. and If i run commerce i need to build cottage economy.

Am I right about the farms?

The games take me a long time to play I thought the game would automatically assign specialists after my population was high enough LOL. I'll try to find that article again.

 

[Larwin]

This is a strange observation, at noble you should be able to utterly wipe the floor with the AI tech rate with fewer cities and no wonders at all. Something is clearly wrong with the basics of both your strategies and more importantly, your empire management.

That's why I started this thread