[BTS] Help and advice with progress

[5tephen]

I'm a bit apprehensive about sharing this but I've made a video of me playing your game to try and show how I got from your save to the save I uploaded earlier in this thread.

It shows the basic gameplay mechanics and some of my thought processes (which are limited by having to play and speak and keep the video progressing!) My gameplay is far from perfect - Lain is the gold standard for that but I hoped this would be absolute beginner accessible.

The recording quality is poor but it's the best I'll be getting out of my equipment!

Let me know if this helps and I'll upload a second video and consider recording a third. If it's complete rubbish I'll take it down and reduce my digital footprint!

 

[guyyee]

I'm a bit apprehensive about sharing this but I've made a video of me playing your game to try and show how I got from your save to the save I uploaded earlier in this thread.

Thanks @5tephen - this is great but the audio volume is too low, when I dialed the volume up, the audio becomes too muddled with noise. I could barely make out what you are saying. also, resolution of 720p or above would be better, although I could pull up my screen and shadow your play.

 

[guyyee]

edit: Okay! Even Better! I was able to find kossin's central thread for the micro challenge (I recalled there was one). Located here:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/micro-challenge-central.499254/

Too bad the screenshots are dead, but everything is explained - goals/rules/solution. I can't remember what each one was, but if you do them and have questions I will review. Again, don't be hesitant to retry each challenge over and over until the concept sinks it.

Ya, this is gold, exactly the exercise I was looking for. Played Challenge #1. Appalling... it really magnified the mistakes noobs like me makes.

 

[5tephen]

Glad you liked it!

I don't own a microphone and was using a pair of headphones as an improvised microphone. My computer is pretty basic so I don't think a higher resolution will be possible without an unacceptable amount of lag.

Is it good enough to be useful to post the second video and consider recording a third or more of a failed experiment?

 

[5tephen]

OK. I had a think and have found a way to use my smartphone as a microphone using WoMic.

I think this gives much more acceptable sound quality.

Here's my second attempt.

Let me know if it's any good and I could continue from where I've left off.

 

[guyyee]

OK. I had a think and have found a way to use my smartphone as a microphone using WoMic.

I think this gives much more acceptable sound quality.

Here's my second attempt.

Let me know if it's any good and I could continue from where I've left off.

So much better, brilliant stuffs! thank you!

 

[guyyee]

This video guide by @5tephen is really good. I'd recommend it to my fellow beginners when starting out. It goes into a little more details of CIV4 game mechanics than you'd otherwise see in a play-through guide. In fact, it's the best I've seen so far. It's easy to follow and understand, like a teacher guiding you by your side. I learnt quite a number of things, and it reinforces some of the things you read from this forum.

@5tephen thanks and keep them coming! you should definitely put the download link of the game save on the video description so that other players can follow in real time, as the low video resolution blurs out the tiny texts on the game screen.

Also, I played 6 hours straight last night, trying to apply the techniques learnt so far. This is the longest consecutive hours I have spent playing a game. CIV4 is really a serious time-eater.

 

[Pangaea]

Haven't watched the whole video, I have a thundering migraine again today, so am not good for much -- however, I love the fact that people are willing to do this great service for new players. Thank you for that. Maybe this can be a go-to video of sorts for showing players that are struggling with the mechanics.

 

[guyyee]

Hi guys, hope you are having a great weekend. Can I just get your advice on how to deal with this shrinking pop problem?

Spoiler City Screen - Shrinking Population :

I suspect it has something to do with the health issue.

Spoiler Unhealthy Citizens :

Also, what do these walls around another civ do? Are they merely ornamental? I don't see any defensive bonus on the tiles.

Spoiler Walls around a civ? :

 

[AcaMetis]

That city had it's water source poisoned by an enemy spy, it's something that AIs love to do for...whatever reason. Just wait it out, the unhealth from the poison will fade over time and your city will go back to normal. Smaller than it used to be/could be, but normal otherwise.

That is The Great Wall, it's an early wonder that prevents land-based Barbarian units from entering any of your cultural tiles if you control the city the wonder was build in. The wall's position on the map is just a visual thing, it doesn't do anything other than look pretty.

 

[guyyee]

I've been playing consistently with some progress (see game save).

TLDR: Killed off Spain, Mongols with my troops. Killed off English (bribed Aztech to DoW and my forces join the war - English civ later made vassal state of Aztech) and finished off Dutch (my civ DoW on Willem first, but out of nowhere Montezuma decides to be opportunist and join in ?!!).

Along the way, I encountered some questions:

1. How do you keep abreast of rival civ's tech research progress?

2. What do you do when the rival civ's culture influence shoots up exponentially?

Spoiler Culture spurt :

3. What should be the research path now that I have entered Renaissance era? As you can see, I just went ahead with tech that will lead me to rifle and cannon.

Spoiler Tech tree advice :

4. Can you take a look at my cities and see if I'm managing that correctly? I'm not averse to building markets and courthouses to try and alleviate the economy situation - poor move? In fact, I went on and built a bank in London on the computer's suggestion.

5. For all intents and purposes, it seems that I am now left with only one major rival: the Aztechs. I'm keen to hear your thoughts on how to rush headlong to a winning finish.

6. Should I have exploited the vassalage situation - how is this useful?

 

[AcaMetis]

1. How do you keep abreast of rival civ's tech research progress?

Once you have Alphabet and can trade techs the game will inform you of what techs a civ has for trade, what techs you have that a civ might want to trade for, and what techs a civ can research. That last one in particular allows you to easily deduce where your rivals are in terms of techs, at least roughly. Do keep in mind that AIs can trade techs among themselves, too, so never assume that an AI can't be close to something without thoroughly checking all their options.

2. What do you do when the rival civ's culture influence shoots up exponentially?

Nothing. The only time an AI's culture is a problem is if they're going for a Cultural victory (which requires them to have 3 cities with 50.000 or more culture), or if they're your neighbour and are putting pressure on your border cities. The former case is only a problem if that puts them on schedule to win before you do, the latter is only an issue if you can't take the offending cities from the AI and make them your own. And anyone focussing on culture isn't focussing on key military techs to actually keep their cities safe from invasion, so....

3. What should be the research path now that I have entered Renaissance era? As you can see, I just went ahead with tech that will lead me to rifle and cannon.

Traditionally people will beeline towards Liberalism, since the first person to research that tech gets a free technology and obviously that's as great a thing to get as it is to deny to any of the other AIs. But the path towards Lib is really only useful if you're going to continue teching, since Lib requires two techs and neither has any direct military value on their own - and neither does Lib itself, for that matter, beyond getting you a free tech. Philosophy is great for Pacifism, which militarily is about as useful as you'd expect (for getting to the military techs, especially through Lib, Pacifism is nothing short of fantastic. But once you have an actual army on the board, less so). Education enables Universities and Oxford, both of which offer a serious boost to your beaker output - especially if you've prepared a strong Bureau capital with lots of mature cottages - but when you're dead set on conquering the world with your military prowess before anyone can tech/build up enough to stop you than both of those are just useless. So going towards Lib can end up being a very expensive detour that you could have instead invested in teching military techs the normal way, at times.

There's ways to make going towards Lib more rewarding and less painful, limit the opportunity cost and maximize the benefit, but in your situation it's probably better to just get cannons and rifles and roll over the entire world with them. Rifles and Cannons against Noble AIs researching Guilds and Engineering is going to be a very one-sided contest, especially when you've got 15 cities.

4. Can you take a look at my cities and see if I'm managing that correctly? I'm not averse to building markets and courthouses to try and alleviate the economy situation - poor move?

Whipping out a Courthouse or two when you capture an absolutely massive city that would just starve down otherwise isn't a completely unreasonable idea, especially when you don't need/can't support any more units so whipping a few more units out of your captures isn't a viable alternative. That said you're usually better off building Wealth than building Courthouses, especially when you're starting to get close to Communism, which will solve all distance maintenance-related problems forever. Or at least until the UN inevitably forces everyone into Environmentalism, but by that point your economy should be able to manage.

4. For all intents and purposes, it seems that I am now left with only one major rival: the Aztechs. I'm keen to hear your thoughts on how to rush headlong to a winning finish.

From the looks of it the best unit that Monty is about to get is Knights, and you have Rifles. If you show up on his doorstep with an army of Rifles (and cannons, preferably) that's not a case of you catching him with his pants down, that's you catching him before the tailor who will make his pants has even been born.

 

[guyyee]

From the looks of it the best unit that Monty is about to get is Knights, and you have Rifles. If you show up on his doorstep with an army of Rifles (and cannons, preferably) that's not a case of you catching him with his pants down, that's you catching him before the tailor who will make his pants has even been born.

A few more questions:

1. This city is stagnant - any suggestions on how to improve it?

Spoiler Stagnant City :

2. I haven't touched the Civics since switching to Slavery and Hereditary Rule - time to make a change?

Spoiler Civics change? :

3. After selecting Great General to confer 20XP to the troops in the same tile - the system asked me to choose: what do I do?

Spoiler Great General select troops to lead? :

 

[AcaMetis]

1. This city is stagnant - any suggestions on how to improve it?

Since it's a coastal city you can build a Lighthouse and improve the coastal tiles to be 2 tiles. This only requires Sailing and a bit of production, Lighthouses aren't expensive buildings for a size 10 city (needless to say you usually build them a bit earlier). You can also replace those mines with Windmills, as they provide +1. Also, getting +1 in the city will get you another citizen who'll actually do work. Also, work the food tiles over the 0 tundra mine.

2. I haven't touched the Civics since switching to Slavery and Hereditary Rule - time to make a change?

That depends on what you intend to do. Are you going to whip infrastructure or units? Stay in Slavery. Are you done with whipping? Switch into Caste System. Are you ready to go full unit production until everyone else is dead mode? Police State/Vassalage/Theocracy for extra unit xp and production. Are you planning on teching a bunch? Rep/Caste/Pacifism to take advantage of specialists and generate great people.

3. After selecting Great General to confer 20XP to the troops in the same tile - the system asked me to choose: what do I do?

This is to choose which specific unit gets the "Lead by Warlord" promotion, which gives that unit - only that unit, no other in the stack - access to GG-specific promotions and free upgrades. If you're upgrading a bunch of units it doesn't really matter all that much, just whichever unit you think has the highest chance to survive and actually make use of said promotions.

Also a reminder: A Great General will evenly divide that 20xp among the group. So a 20-unit stack will get a grand total of 1xp each, which isn't useful unless those units are 1xp from reaching the next promotion. If you have a stack of ten units with 3xp, for example, each unit would get an extra 2xp, which puts them at 5/5, so that's ten units that would get upgraded to level 3. That makes a significantly larger impact than throwing xp around randomly.

 

[Fish Man]

@guyyee

You're using the great general wrong...if you haven't already, you should've made a supermedic first. Attach the GG to a 2-move unit with no other units on the tile, and give it combat 1, then medic 1-3. This will heal your army over 5 times faster in enemy territory.

 

[elitetroops]

With Rep, Caste, Free Religion and some quick city micro I got your empire from 420 beakers/turn to over 750 while still not starving any cities. Normally you'd go Pacifism rather than FR, but in this case a great scientist would only bulb education which doesn't help you at all so FR might be better. However, you are already so close to steel that the anarchy is not worth it. Just build wealth everywhere to power through the last few techs, then go Police State, Vassalage and Theocracy and whip cannons and rifles everywhere. There's no point anymore to build anything but wealth, rifles or cannons in any city for the remainder of the game. Possibly build research instead of wealth while teching if you aren't running out of gold.

You have a great person coming in a couple of turns. Sadly he can be anything but the one great person that would help you, a Great Merchant. Running a great merchant trade mission for a bunch of gold to help teching and to upgrade all those CR maces to rifles would be awesome.

 

[Lennier]

My 2-cents:

1) You have an unhappy citizen in the city, so you can pick something, wait a turn, and then whip. AcaMetis suggested putting a lighthouse there, so that might be something to whip.

2) It looks like you have possession of both the Pyramids and the SP, but haven't used them. If you build/take possession of the 'mids early, the standard play is to switch into Representation at the earliest possible time. Police State is another option if you're building up an army to stomp someone, but usually only for Spiritual leaders so they can switch back to Representation without penalty once the army is built. You're also running Paganism with access to all the Religious civics. Which one you want depends on your goals. Organized Religion is good for the early game, but its bonus is to building buildings and its a relatively expensive civic, so not so good once you've built a few cities. Theocracy is really good for while you're building an army if your state religion is well spread as it gives 2 xp to units built in cities with your state religion; that will be 2 promotions out of the gate with cities with barracks. Pacifism is good for generating GPs, but increases the maintenance cost of your army. FR gives a small boost to research and a happiness boost, as well as avoiding being in a religious block. But all are better than Paganism.

3) As was pointed out above, you almost always want to attach a GG to a unit that is alone in the tile.

 

[lymond]

3) As was pointed out above, you almost always want to attach a GG to a unit that is alone in the tile.

With the exception of the supermedic dude, that is actually not what I do in most cases. GG's are great for providing health when you need it to a few units during war. I often will just keep a GG in stack and use it on 4 or 5 units that need quick healing via promos.

@guyyee You have played quite a lot in this game without much guidance. The good thing is that is part of the process. You are becoming more familiar with a game you have little knowledge of prior to this exercise. However, you still have a lot to learn here, and definitely need a lot more fine tuning on the early game concepts.

A couple of things I see that concern me. Washington was meant to be cottaged and I'm sad to see that it was not..ha. NY was never meant to be a large city and not every city needs to be large. It primary purpose was to be a helper city to Washington, with some tile sharing early. Yet, still it was a nicely productive city early on with copper and stuff. Sometimes certain cities simply don't need to grow very big. Also, ignoring the civics was bad, but granted you were not getting much help and did not know better as you continued to play on. Ultimately, Washington is the city that you want to grow as large as it can eventually, taking back its food resources and working all the cottages. Switch to Bureaucracy as soon as Civil Service is teched.

Feel free to continue this game however you wish, but I recommend that you start a new game for advice to shore up some of the early basics of the game, which still need a lot of work.

 

[guyyee]

I'm so pumped by your critiques and comments. This is the only impactful way to improve. Please keep dispensing them... thank you so much.

@guyyee
You're using the great general wrong...if you haven't already, you should've made a supermedic first. Attach the GG to a 2-move unit with no other units on the tile, and give it combat 1, then medic 1-3. This will heal your army over 5 times faster in enemy territory.

I see. Why a 2-move unit specifically? To be honest, I am completely clueless about using this GG unit. Any other important aspect/function of GG I should know?

With Rep, Caste, Free Religion and some quick city micro I got your empire from 420 beakers/turn to over 750 while still not starving any cities.

Ok, that is amazing. Which city did you micro and can you teach me how?

Normally you'd go Pacifism rather than FR, but in this case a great scientist would only bulb education which doesn't help you at all so FR might be better. However, you are already so close to steel that the anarchy is not worth it. Just build wealth everywhere to power through the last few techs, then go Police State, Vassalage and Theocracy and whip cannons and rifles everywhere.

I'm really sorry, but I don't quite follow. Can you explain?

It looks like you have possession of both the Pyramids and the SP, but haven't used them. If you build/take possession of the 'mids early, the standard play is to switch into Representation at the earliest possible time.

What is "SP"? Yeah, I didn't look into the captured cities' wonders. I could have exploited all these war spoils but didn't. What is the rationale of switching to Representation after acquiring Pyramids?

Feel free to continue this game however you wish, but I recommend that you start a new game for advice to shore up some of the early basics of the game, which still need a lot of work.

Ok, I'll definitely do that. I'm chin deep into this game enthusiasm-wise and I'm motivated as ever to improve.

 

[guyyee]

A couple of things I see that concern me. Washington was meant to be cottaged and I'm sad to see that it was not..ha.

I see. Just trying to understand this further, when you say "meant to be cottaged", can you be more specific? How would you have improved the tiles?

Spoiler Washington City Screen :