Help me beat warlord!

[Gumbolt]

Don't know if this was mentioned but opening a tribe with a scout will not spawn barbs. (one advantage of using scouts for that)

I don't think any huts on Warlord do that? Higher levels they do for sure.

 

[Gator Country]

I don't think any huts on Warlord do that? Higher levels they do for sure.

I think huts won't pop barbs on Noble either. They do for sure on Prince.

 

[Gumbolt]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10629596&postcount=13

Correction barbs are possible but it is weighted heavily for gold, maps, techs and warriors. Warlord is last level a free settler is available. You also get TW free on Warlord along with a lot of happiness and health. You also get 3 frees wins vs barbs on Warlord.

Like I said a lot of things are stacked in the players favour on Warlord.

 

[Seraiel]

You could've told me that before I even started the game....

I don't really feel inclined to mod a game I haven't even played yet, and I don't see why I should start a whole new game with a start like this.

Sry, but this is where it ends. You didn't even say TY though I invested several hours into the posts helping you. Then you say that you wouldn't like to post screens because it's "a little of a hassle" and demand from people to open your saves. Then you can't wait a few hours and comment that nobody commented on your thread yet while it was brandnew.

Seriously, you're not getting any comments from me until I see a change from you and until I have a serious apology. I'll not waste my time longer on someone that is not grateful, idle, impatiengt and then writes a comment like that which expresses several things, 1. ungratitude again, 2. it want's me to believe that I didn't write what I wrote fast enough though I was very fast and you also didn't listen or understand several things that I wrote so you even ignored parts of the effort I made for you and then again 3. idlness again.

Anybody else can see this as fact and reflect if helping xBlackWolfx is a good decision in his opinion aswell, these are my personal experiences with him and every single one is 100% true and the only thing I regret right now was that I didn't listen to myself, but I'll listen to me now.

 

[Major Tom]

Blackwolf, real men dont care about silk. Horses due on map in a couple of turns.

 

[Gumbolt]

Ah just found Blackwolf previous post.

Learning curve!

1. Upload images. Although I find saves okay. Images are easier when not at your home pc.
2. Listen to advice and understand why we have given the advice.
3. Have a plan yourself. We are not here to play your entire game. Show some level of thought. Why is one thing better than another??
4. Focus when you play and be prepared to change your play if you truly want our help.
5. Be grateful.

I think we realise you won't be a deity player over night. Maybe not even a Monarch player. The thing is if you just post long essays on why things go wrong it's hard for this forum to help. Also playing with huts is slowing your learning curves.

 

[civfanchambers]

Seraiel has gone out of his way to help several players in the few years I've been a member of the forum. His advice should not be taken lightly. I have seen a few players disregard Seraiels' advice and get frustrated because they were too impatient are stubborn to listen. All players need to appreciate the time and effort others people take in helping each other. Btw Seraiel, my thanks to you for all the help I've gotten / seen from you.

 

[Pangaea]

And I can irrigate that one desert at some point so it gives something. Unless that freshwater will let me place a cottage there. I think that would be preferred.

You can't build improvements on desert tiles. Unless there is a resource there (like incense, copper or iron). You can build roads, but not a farm or cottage.

Think I'd prefer the city spot 1S of your "A" spot, so 1SE of the corn. That has the corn in inner ring, and also gives the city fresh water from the river. You can't improve the spice, silk or dyes for a long while anyway. You need calendar for all of them, and also iron working to cut down the jungle on some of them.

All the abbreviations is a huge hurdle for new players here, no doubt about it. I used to complain too when I came to this site, and trying to read posts and guides was like reading declassified/leaked military documents with every 2nd word an abbreviation. With time it becomes better and you learn some of the more usual ones, but it's a drag, no doubt about it.

Some of the more common ones:

SIP: Settle in place
GG: Great General
GA: (extra confusing because it can mean two things) Great Artist or Golden Age
GP: Great People (or even Great Prophet)
GE: Great Engineer
GS: Great Scientist (but also Great Spy, though I prefer to write GSpy for those)
Mids: The Pyramids
GLH: The Great Lighthouse wonder
PH: Plains hill (a hill with a base 2-hammers tile yield, which can be improved to 4 hammers with a mine, and if you settle cities there, the city tile itself will give 2 hammers, unlike the normal yield of 1 hammer)

Then you have some people who write stuff like PHF (for plains hill forest). I don't use them myself, and find it confusing even now, after years on this site. It's just taking laziness to a new level. Surely it won't kill people to write a word in full once in a blue moon

 

[Gator Country]

From my math, my city has no need for farms, I can achieve over 40 food with just a lighthouse and the resources around me, so yeah I wouldn't use agriculture right away anyway. Besides, people seem to think I use too many farms.

And yeah, seeing that my UU replaces the horse archer, I'm guessing that I'm going to be getting into an early war this game. And my unique building just so happens to replace the stables too. I suspect I'm going to be using a lot of mounted units.

When people say you use too many farms, maybe what they're really saying is that you make too many farms in the early game that aren't going to be worked for a long time to come. That just wastes worker turns that could be better spent improving tiles that can be used right away. Worker turns are the most precious thing you have in the early game, and you want to waste as few of them as possible.

And you certainly do need farms, otherwise growth in your cities is going to crawl most of the time. Don't get hung up on having enough food to work every tile - your cities will not grow that large until very late in the game, and in fact, most of your cities never will get that large - maybe only two or three of your oldest ones will.

Regarding your settler - I know this one was an unexpected surprise from a goody hut, but I hope you're escorting him with the scout you used to get him from the hut (I can't tell from the shot if he's on the same tile as the settler). Get yourself into the habit of always escorting them (and your workers) with a military unit when they have to leave your territory. There's nothing worse than watching 100 hammers of early production go up in smoke because your settler got gobbled up by a barb lion.

And please try to be more patient when waiting for responses to your posts. You have people from all over the world posting here, and they all have work, family and other commitments to take care of on all kinds of schedules, so they can't always be here to respond.

 

[Gumbolt]

Edit - Barb animals do appear much sooner than 40 turns on Warlords. That website data is not up to date. T14 is more than possible.

So settle 2nd city 1SE of corn.

Decide if new city builds a warrior. (3-4H a turn.) Or a worker. Warrior would be for an early war. Worker if you plan to go KK (uniique unit.)

 

[Gator Country]

Re: The BUG Mod -

It's actually quite simple to install. First, quit Civ4, go to your My Documents\My Games\beyondthesword folder, and locate a folder called CustomAssets. Make a backup copy of it.

Download the installer from this link - https://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4bug/

Then run the installer. When the install options screen pops up, select the top (default) choice, to install in your CustomAssets folder. This will make BUG active in any game you play, and you can download and play saves from this forum even if the player isn't using BUG, and you'll still have all the BUG enhancements.

Select the other default options, then install. Launch Civ4 (you can do this through your normal Steam shortcut) and enjoy all that BUG goodness.

It's not really "cheating" - all of the extra information that BUG gives you is still there in the vanilla game, you just won't have to ferret it out by clicking through endless screens/subscreens.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Seeing as how I've got mostly only trolls here (go figure, its a gaming forum), I decided to abandon that game and try one on my own. I tried the early war strategy thing. Got slaughtered at 500 BC. Yeah, sure, that works out great.

Don't listen to anyone who claims you should just spam warriors and take the first city you find. I got slaughtered doing that. They're just trolls trying to waste your time.

I'm going to assume that I'm not going to get any help here. I'm just going to have to figure this out on my own. I was able to play warlord consistently long ago, so theoretically I should be able to again on my own anyway.

 

[Gator Country]

I decided to shadow this one myself. I can't promise a 1500's BC win, or even a 550 BC one, but I think I'm doing pretty okay anyway.

At 775 BC -

Spoiler :

I basically followed Gumbolt's tech path - AH>Ag (from hut)>Mining>BW>HBR>Archery. Settled the horses to the south, got them hooked up and then started pumping out Keshiks, whipping them until they bled and then whipping some more. Gathered up a stack of six, plus a couple of chariots that I built while waiting for HBR and Archery to finish, then went after Bismarck. I lost one chariot and took Berlin in one turn - that chariot is the only unit I've lost so far. Went after Hamburg next - he had built improvements on all the resources nearby, but none of them were in the town's BFC, so I razed it. That was the end of the Germans - captured three workers from him, so now I have more than I know what to do with.

Next was Spain. It took me a bit of blundering around before I finally found the front door, but I did, and now Madrid is mine. Her second city was only size 1, so it auto-razed. She had a pretty lousy starting position.


Had a kind of funny D'oh moment - I was building a monument in my second city, and when I captured Berlin I got a "You can't continue building a monument here" message. I was wondering what the heck had just happened, when it hit me that Bismarck had been kind enough to build Stonehenge for me. First time I've ever gotten failgold for a monument.

Another funny Warlord moment - I ended up reloading earlier saves twice because one of the huts kept insisting on giving me a settler. That just felt too much like drowning kittens in a bathtub.

I'm doing a couple of routine builds in my two core cities (I wanted it to try to feel like a normal game!), but I think I'm just going to go back to spamming units and continue to steamroll the continent. Berlin's pacified and the copper that Bismarck was also kind enough to develop for me is back on line, so now I can start spamming axes to go with my Keshiks. I had my worker army mine every hill around it, so now I'm going to pick my next victim (I'm thinking it should be HC - I still have a 2:1 power ratio over him, and it might be nice to stomp him before he starts spreading techs around) and get them roading out his way. I put my wounded Keshiks in my new cities to heal up, and am now locating everyone else with the healed ones.

That's all I can do tonight. I have to be at a job site 2 hours away at 8:00 AM tomorrow, which means I have to be up at five. That comes real early these days.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

I decided to think about what I did different back then. I would always try to conquer the whole planet, even if I had to go beyond 2050 to do it. Now, I try to go for other victories besides world conquest, which well isn't even technically a win condition anyway (you win when you control 2/3 of the planet anyway).

Perhaps I'm being too passive, perhaps I should actually plan for war and conquest long before it happens. My problem is, I don't know how to strike a balance. Either you conquer the world, or you play like you're the only civ and there's no need for warfare.

What I really need to do, is learn how to actually fight a war. How many units are necessary, and how many are too much. How to properly build an army, how I should use them. I have figured out some things on my own. Defensive bonuses may not benefit you when you're attacking, but they do help when you're trying to march your army up to their city. If I leave my units in forests and on hills, then he'll have a harder time killing them in between my turns. Also, I only recently found out that the 'collateral' damage from siege weapons, only applies when you're using them to attack the city, not bombard it. I tried bombarding the city, then attacking it with my siege weapons, though I lost all of them it made the city much easier to conquer. Maybe I should just read through all the guides provided in the game to learn the mechanics better.

Anyway, thinking about it, pretty much everything I do know I figured out on my own. Perhaps I really don't need anyone. I just need to calm down and think about what's going on. And read the instructions in the game.

 

[Gumbolt]

Only trolls? Haha.

You got slaughered as you don't listen! Warriors vs warriors at start should be easy. If you attacked versus axes you would have got slaughtered. You had a free settler yet you gave up so easily?

Are you just trying to waste people's time here? I think so.

 

[cseanny]

Don't listen to anyone who claims you should just spam warriors and take the first city you find. I got slaughtered doing that. They're just trolls trying to waste your time.

I think you should take an honest step back and re-evaluate what you know and or have learned about the game. IMHO no one, not a single person has trolled you. Quite the contrary. A few people might have reacted rather point of the matter towards you but that probably has a lot to do with your overall tone in this thread.

Here is a screen shot and save of the 1560 BC Victory from your starting save. The save is under BAT (bull and bug combo) 4.1 Blue Marble. You'll notice I did not Settle in Place (SIP). I moved inland until I found a Plains Hill (PH) and Plains Hill w/ forest (PHF). This gives you 3 turn Warriors. I then Captured Berlin and Rome with 2 Warriors (2 for each, 4 total). Nothing fancy or tricky about it - settled on a 5 Capital and then make some Warriors. In other words you don't even try to grow. You simply work max .

edit: I looked at the log in the game and I actually took out Isabella 3rd and Hannibal was 4th. I then used captured workers to chop/whip more warriors (mostly from Rome) and then Captured Carthage, a Hill City with 1 Archer and 1 Warrior with 7 of my own Warriors (coming from Rome). So in a very short time, and with no particular strategy needed beyond making Warriors 4 AI Civilizations are Dead - and we're talking very very early.

Then you simply use Chariots, Warriors, and a few Keshiks to kill off the remainding AI's. I'm not sure why you find this impossible or trolling. It's very straight forward. Matter of fact, here is another HoF (Hall of Fame) game which we have to use an anti-cheat Mod called Buffy. There is strict rules and it's impossible to cheat, it's got lock modified assets, etc etc.

Anyways, the game below was a Noble game (which is definitely harder than Warlord) and I finished in 1880 BC. The link is here: http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/challenge.php?show=game9&series=15

Final point? No one is trolling you. We are trying to help. If you don't like the forums or the responses you get then take some time to read the War Academy. I think quite a lot of the information there is outdated but I'm sure you'd be able to learn quite a bit and you could do it in a way and pace that fits you best.

Cheers and Good Luck.

 

[Gumbolt]

From Blackwolf's last save.

B3160. Captured Berlin 3120bc. The second unit in his city here is a worker.

Spoiler :

To see what would of happened if I just used warriors from the new city. Waited till 2920bc. (2 were from new city 2 from Berlin.)

Spoiler :

Overall I used a forest in each city so I had at least 3H per turn. 5 turn warrior. Even by 3160bc he was just getting his first worker out. Overall i followed my advice and it worked perfectly.

I have no idea what Blackwolf did here but 2 warriors to take down an AI capital with a chance to capture a worker too? 30 hammers pays back over 160 hammers. City+ worker. Rinse and repeat for next AI. I can easily see how Cseanny took down this map mainly with warriors.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Actually doing quite well in my current game. Decided to go to war against one of my neighbors, mostly because this time I got a map where I was immedietly surrounded by 4 or 5 civs: tokugawa, kubla khan, louis, frederick...ramses is also on the map somewhere, but I have no idea where. I found all these within the first 10 turns, barely any exploration.

I went to war against louis, massed swordsmen, axemen, horse archers, and pikemen while I teched to construction so I could build catapults. Whipped out about 6-10 catapults (can't remember), saved, then marched into his territory. I had already sent in a spy so I could see that he didn't stand a chance against my force. Bombarded his capital, then assaulted him with the catapults until my main army could get a 99% win rate, then killed probably over a dozen of his units. Then I moved on to another one of his cities. Right now, he appears to have 2 more pathetic settlements I can take. I even got 4 workers out of him, which is nice considering that he managed to kill most of mine by sneaking one unit behind my troops. Lovely.

Anyway, got lots of promotions, some of my units now have city attack, +% vs archers, and +% vs melee. I brought along a few pikemen in case I had to kill some mounted units. Oh, and I got a great general out of it all.

I decided to save and turn off the game before finishing off the french. Next, I may take out kublai khan, I'm kinda scared too since he appears to have quite an empire (really starting to love spies), but I'm kinda losing a culture war against him, and he built a flipping city right in the middle of my empire, cutting off one of my cities from the rest. Yeah, he's going to pay for that.

Of course, I don't see how an 'early war' is possible. I mean, how are you supposed to deal with archers??? Many civs start off with them, and for the others its only 1 tech away. And combine that with defense bonuses, there's simply no way you can take a city until you can bombard it. Of course, I did use to do early rushes, but that was with jaguar warriors (can't remember if this was civ 3 or 4), since well they're warriors with the movement speed of scouts. They could easily find a city and take it before the opponent managed to get a decent defense up. But other than that, I just see no way a pre-catapult war can be done.

In the meantime, I have to finish off louis, and perhaps recoup for a bit before I got after kubla. My spy didn't show anything really scary in his territory. But since he obviously has a lot more cities than louis did, I'm probably going to need a bigger army to conquer it all.

edit: oh, and my starting city? I started the game surrounded by 4 ivory. Seriously. Also had wheat, bananas, incense or dye (can't remember, it needed a plantation that's all I can recall). Yeah, like half my tiles have a resource on them. Sadly though, my empire seems to lack copper (luckily, iron can substitute). Literally the only npc who had copper appears to have been louis. And well, that's gonna be mine once I take lyon.

I'll be honest, playing more aggressively does seem to make the game easier. And yeah, who cares about building wonders when you can just conquer them from the other civs? His capital alone had 3 (including stonehenge, and every building that you could make at his tech level, very handy)

 

[elitetroops]

On Warlord level no civs start with archers. They don't start with archers until monarch level. Taking cities without bombardment is also a walk in the park if you have enough units. (On warlord "enough units" is one axe, as long as you get it early enough.)

Horse Archers should rely on speed. That means no waiting for catapults. Usually if you go to war with Horse Archers you should build only Horse Archers, no other units at all, and run over the map.

If you got a Great General, use it to make a Super Medic. Have the General on a tile with only one single other unit, preferrably a weak and fast unit, like a scout or chariot. If you don't know the math for promotions it's safest to use a new unit, one with no promotions. With only those 2 in the tile, choose "lead unit as warlord", or whatever it's called. This gives 20 XP to the single unit. Use those XP to promote Combat 1->Medic 1->Medic2->Medic 3. Now you have a unit that will heal any stack in 2 turns in your own territory and 3 turns in enemy territory. Keep that one close to the front line and always move in to heal the stack after they have attacked. Best to do healing inside cities you have just captured. And whatever you do, don't fight with the Super Medic, it's just not worth it.

 

[Gumbolt]

I went to war against louis, massed swordsmen, axemen, horse archers, and pikemen while I teched to construction so I could build catapults. Whipped out about 6-10 catapults (can't remember), saved, then marched into his territory.

Erm pikemen requires engineering? If you had engineering why are you not using trebs??

As Elite points out on Warlord the AI don't start with archers. Did you read any of the above recent posts? I clearly demonstrated you could rush an Ai with warriors.

We showed you what a huge advantage you had on warlord. The Ai won't reach their third city till about 500bc. At that point their defences are only 1-2 units per city. You really should be walking this level with ease.

You have a habit of ignoring what everyone here actually posts and just writing essays about how your games supposedly went. This is why the likes of Seriael who is one of the best players on the forum chooses to ignore you now. Overall you appear to be trolling this forum and winding up regulars here who actually want to help people.