Help me beat warlord!

[elitetroops]

And I guess I'll look into installing the mod, though honestly it looks kinda like cheating, mostly the fact that it shows you how many cities your opponents have, and especially the fact that it warns you when they're about to declare war on you. That feels kinda game-breaking. I know of no way to do that in-game. Every time someone declares war on me, I never expect it. Well, I do often expect it from civs that hate me, but I have no way of predicting when it'll happen.

On the trade screen all your opponents cities, except for the capital, are listed as tradeable items. That's how you know how many cities they have.

You can also see the option to ask him to declare war on someone as a tradeable item. If all war bribe trades are red, you can hover the mouse cursor on them to see his reasons for not being willing to go to war. If he says "We have enough on our hands already", he either is at war or planning to attack someone soon. If you want to continue not knowing what your opponents are planning, you can of course not look for this information. But if you do want to know, you would have to cycle through all the trade screens every turn, or install BUG mod.

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.

You definitely need Agriculture and that wheat farm. Getting out workboats is slow, building farms is fast. Worker should pasture cows, farm wheat, then mine gems.

Popping settlers is kind of crazy. Scout the area around that corn and prepare to settle there. Move settler together with your scout until you've found your spot and he is safe from barb animals. On Warlord difficulty you get 3 free wins against barbs, so your scout cannot die to any of the first barb animal attacks.

 

[cseanny]

Help me beat warlord!

I know I've seen DaveMCW post this in the past but I'll reiterate. To beat Warlord you just need to build Warriors (at least initially). You can easily take out 2 or 3 civilizations with nothing but Warriors. I'd imagine goody huts will give stuff like workers, settlers, and techs. Getting all three is very likely.

You shouldn't need any more tech than AH, Min, and BW (whip/chop). Kill 2 or 3 neighbors will Warriors then follow up the rest with Chariots/Axe (conquered Capitals should get you a resource too).

I've already played this one out using Bat 4.1 Blue Marble and finished with a 1560 BC Conquest (I'll post Screenie and Save when your game is done).

I'd suggest perhaps moving up to at least Prince/Noble and then start another forum/shadow game. Imo it's hard to build proper game mechanics and knowledge on a level where the AI is so heavily handicapped.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Well this stinks, I explored a bit more. There's two mountains (and I mean the bad kind) right north of the corn. I don't see anyway I can take the corn without having either those mountains in the city radius, or have my cities tiles overlap. To the east btw appears to be a desert, but it has fresh water so I guess I could irrigate it.

Spoiler :

And I think I'll go install the BUG program after I found this city. Right now I have the game minimized.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

I've already played this one out using Bat 4.1 Blue Marble and finished with a 1560 BC Conquest (I'll post Screenie and Save when your game is done).

That sounds impossible to me. And I am trying to build up to noble. I get the impression that its the 'average/mediocre' setting.

 

[Gumbolt]

Decided to shadow. Up to 550bc. Major spoilers.

Spoiler :

Built a second city near horse.
Teched AH, mining, BW, AG, HBR, Archery.

Whipped HA in both cities even at size 1-2. Stole worker from nearby Ai before delcaring too. Just kept whipping HA.

The Ai were simply not equiped to handle such a strong UU.

Conquest 550bc.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Decided to cheat, I saved the game and put my settler right where he is, just to explore the area. I plan to reload the save from right before I made the city in case I don't like it.

There's 2 silk north of my location, and a lot of desert. Right now, I don't know what to do. If I take those resources, I'll end up with a bunch of unusable tiles.

Spoiler :

As for barbarians, I have seen none yet. But that would explain why I seem to get lucky with barbarians the first few times. I mean, I've seen scouts take on warriors and lions and panthers with no problem. I never could figure out why. I guess the 'free wins' thing explains A LOT.

edit: To me, it looks like the best way to minimize the number of unusuable tiles, and still get the corn, is to build the city 1E of my scout. As for that silk up there, I don't know how I'll get it.

 

[Gator Country]

Don't be afraid to settle cities so that they overlap tiles. A couple of points about this.

1. If the tiles overlap, the cities can share them. So if city #2 is a bit weak on food and the capital has plenty, you can assign a food tile to city #2 if the tiles overlap to keep it growing. This helps keep your best tiles working all the time as well.
2. Since the cities are close, it's easier to connect them with roads to get the trade route going, plus your maintenance costs will be lower. It's also easier to move units around to defend if either city is attacked.

 

[cseanny]

That sounds impossible to me. And I am trying to build up to noble. I get the impression that its the 'average/mediocre' setting.

As you develop a deeper understanding for Civ 4 you're gameplay will naturally improve. Quite a few players are much better than I could ever hope to be and I feel the same way about some of their efforts ^. If you stick with it, after a while you'll be the one accomplishing what you used to think impossible.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Decided to move my city to the other location, and move my scout north. There's a cow up there. Oh, and when I planted my city I uncovered a scout which belonged to Bismark.

Spoiler :

And regardless if the tiles overlap or not, I think this is the best spot for the city. It gets the most number of resources, and has the least unusable tiles. Well okay, the lake tiles can't be improved, but at least they give more than a desert or a mountain. 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.

 

[Gumbolt]

@ Cseanny.

Spoiler :

Pretty impressive Cseanny. I went for the UU instead. Warriors would of been much quicker. It's as Elite suggested once. Why build phants when Axes cost almost half the hammers. Warriors are less than half the hammers of a KK.

@ Blackwolf

Just build warriors and attack now. You need to explore more round your capital. Horse would be nice. Settler is a poor build in new city. I would build 2nd worker and beeline agriculture.

Overall this game should be about learning how to crush Ai quickly.

Reloading this early on after getting lucky with a settler seems a bit off.

 

[Virupaksha]

Settling cities with overlap is good. Doesn't matter so much on warlord but distance maintainance costs are less and the cities can share tiles. Having cities grow cottages for the capital is particularly useful.

For much of the game cities stay small anyway as whipping helps production so much. Only work the good tiles and whip away the marginal ones.

I would settle 1S for the overlap and the fresh water, also gets rid of a jungle tile for free but in place is also ok, will be a good city once you grow onto the silks and have calendar.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

I just have it set to settler to get rid of the window. Not sure what I should build from it actually, which is why I'm not ending the turn until I decide. And I plopped down the first city primarily to scout, I wasn't really sure if I was going to keep it or not. And I didn't reload before the settler, I reloaded before I placed down that city, not that my current picture still has 2 cities visible. I'm not wasting that settler.

And I thought this game was going to go on as long as my others. I'm getting the impression that it's going to end a lot quicker?

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Okay, since I have two spots going here, I guess I need to specify a bit more.

Here's position A, which revealed the silk. Also, I'll have to build here if I want to have that silk in my radius (eventually):

Spoiler :

And here's position B, which discovered Bismark, this has one spice and 2 dye:

Spoiler :

Now, which is better, and I guess having spots marked as A and B will make it easier to talk about positioning here? And of course, I can switch between them as I want by reloading my save from right before I popped the settler.

 

[Gumbolt]

Can you upload the latest save??

The game will last as long as you let it. If you spam warriors or the UU the Ai will struggle. If you sit back to 1500ad and just build city stuff the game could go on for a long time.

You have so many things in your favour on Warlord. The Ai are slow out of block and have no worker. The Ai will make lots of bad decision early on. You have a big tech advantage over the Ai too here. They start with very few techs and will certainly not be planning any wars till least 1500bc.

In all honesty getting that free settler is teaching you nothing here. You didn't need it to win. In effect you had to settle a city with very little scouting. Waiting for Ah and then settling might of been better.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

I can do that too. Here's the save from right before I used the settler. I guess I wouldn't mind scouting some more, and waiting to see if I have horses nearby.

 

[cseanny]

Here's another plus of using Bat, Bug, Bull, etc Mods. Alt X in the options lets you make your own color coded BFC. Alt S lets you place in notes, etc, etc, etc. It's a great tool and imo no reason not to use it. And if you decide to spam warriors you should definitely NOT SIP. You want to find a nice PH with a PHF in first ring so you can 3T warriors.

edit: PH = Plains Hill. PHF = Plains Hill w/ forest. SIP = Settle in Place. BFC= Big Fat Cross. 3T = 3 turns. Here's a list of some common acronyms, albeit, I'm sure it's missing quite a few. http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/acronyms.php

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Here's another plus of using Bat, Bug, Bull, etc Mods. Alt X in the options lets you make your own color coded BFC. Alt S lets you place in notes, etc, etc, etc. It's a great tool and imo no reason not to use it. And if you decide to spam warriors you should definitely NOT SIP. You want to find a nice PH with a PHF in first ring so you can 3T warriors.

Okay, can we please not use abbreviations? I have no idea what most of them mean.

 

[rah]

it also revealed two tribes to the west. Not sure if I should have my scout crack those or not though. I know full well that those things can spawn warriors in warlord.

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)

 

[Gumbolt]

I would not be settling on the forest. 1 south could be better?

For now I would settle that second city and scout out your land. Build 2 workers. Or switch the new city to warriors. 5 turn warrior. With a plains hill you could pump warriors each 3 or so turns. Then try stealing 1-2 workers.

AH/AG is fine for now.

Play on for now. Just be a bit more aggressive in your play style. The Ai are really weak early on with warrior defences.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Decided to try and look up the Bug mod. I can't figure out how to install it. It doesn't give directions anywhere, this one file I got doesn't even display any text, and I can't find any indication anywhere where the file is.

But I guess that's a problem for another day.