Help me become a more sophisticated player (please!)

[Guile]

Firstly, thanks in advance to any advice this thread might recieve.

I've been player Civ since Civ2, but I've never been a particularly savy player. I typically have to play at warlord level to have a good shot at winning; noble tends to be unforgiving to me. This a rather embarassing position for a supposed civ veteran to be in, and thus I'd like to refine my game to more compitent level.

These are some things I've noticed about my playstyle that are probable problems, but I'm not really sure how to address them. Additionaly, if these notes suggest other possible problems in my overall understanding of the game, by all means try to shed light on what I'm doing wrong.

- I've generally left a lot of city micromanaging to the AI, which strikes me as crude and ineffectual, but at the same time, I don't seem to fare much better working manually- I'm obviously missing something here. I used to let workers pretty much play themselves too, but I've been much more hands on with them in my last couple of games (which seems to help). Likewise I'm sure I could gain a lot just from proper city micromanagement, but I really just don't know what I'm doing. Help?

- My build orders seem to lack vision and I tend to apply similar starting strategy regardless of which Civ I play (current favorites are Qin, Catherine, and Louie) which I could probably discribe based on my limited reading here as a (poor?) hybrid of worker chop and security.

- I tend to beline for an early religion (usually hinduism if I'm not playing India), but I understand that isn't really a viable strategy on noble+. Should I then focus on infrastructure/millitary early game? What general tech progression(s) would you recomend?

 

[Gargoyle]

Managing a City:

Play each city as a game in its self. What would this city do well? What does it need? What problems will it incur in the near future? If there are no solutions the city itself can accomplish, then is there something more global I can do to help it?

Say you have a city founded near a few Floodplains. You have a city that can grow very quickly but with poor health. You need to address this health issue soon. Many resources, buildings and trade, and even starting traits can help here. Be proactive. Find that cow resource, build a road to it and a pasture on it. Make sure to research the techs that give your workers these abilities.

Also, rearrange the tiles in the city screen to speed or slow production of food, hammers and commerce to current game situation. For example, if your city is going to grow in population in 3 turns but your granary will not be finished until 5 turns, move a worker from a tile supplying more food to one that supplies more hammers. If you get to be 3 turns for the granary and the population to 4 turns, that will mean your granary will save you half your food toward your next growth.

 

[Gargoyle]

Double post, sorry.

 

[Gufnork]

I can't really see what you're doing wrong from what you tell us. Micromanaging cities isn't that important, I usually micromanage the first few cities then say "screw it" and leave them be. I do tell them to stop growing when they hit the happiness cap (when I have the energy) and occasionally ask them to concentrate on hammers, commerce or food. So that's not it.

Worker chop is very efficient and security is good as long as you don't go overboard. You don't escort each settler with 3 archers or so, I hope. So I don't think that's it either.

I can still get Hinduism on Emperor and sometimes Immortal if I start with Mysticism and on Noble you should be guaranteed atleast Judaism if you go straight for it even without Mysticism. So that works and is definetly worth shooting for.

As far as I can tell you're not doing anything wrong. Why are you losing your games, do you fall behind in tech or get conquered?

 

[Grogs]

I think a good place to start is to look at the civ you're playing and your start location at 4000 BC. What techs do you already have? What resource is close to your city? If you need a tech you don't already have (animal husbandry to take advantage of cattle, for example) you might consider making that your early research priority. If there are a lot of forests you'd like to chop down for extra production, you'll need bronze working. As for founding religions, I wouldn't make it a priority unless I started the game with Mysticism. It's likely that at least one of the AI's in the game will already have it, so you'll most likely lose out. If you're still dead set on trying to found a religion, focus on one of the later ones like Confucianism (Code of Laws.)

As for micromanaging cities, I tend to only do that with the buttons on the governor panel (maximize gold, production, food mainly.) I find that most of the time the governor does a pretty decent job assigning workers based on these instructions. Occasionally a size 3 town will steal a farmed tile from a size 20 city putting it into starvation, but otherwise I don't MM too much, except maybe with specialists.

As for build orders, I try and specialize my cities early on. Find a city that can grow to maximum size (happiness and health will limit you early on) and pop out settlers/workers at a pretty good rate. Find another city with lots of production, build a barracks, and produce nothing but military to provide defense for new towns. This allows the new towns to build other things, like granaries. Once your empire reaches a comfortable size, it's time to stop growing for a while and focus on infrastructure and technology for a while.

My final note is wonders. Just like in Civ3, trying to build every wonder will kill you. At noble, I limit myself only to the Wonders for which I have the proper resource (usually stone or marble) and even then I only build the wonder if I think it will be particularly useful. It's also a really good idea to check with the AI civs and see who else has the technology that allows that wonder (after you research alphabet.) If they all have it already, they'll most likely beat you to it. There's no world wonder that you *have* to have to win the game.

 

[Zeviz]

The best way to learn is to watch masters at work. Take a look at the games reported in the Stories and Tales sub-forum. Particularly, Sirian and Sulla's succession game: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133492 Even if they are playing a crazy variant, you can still see how expert players think about the game.

As far as what your mistakes are, it's impossible to say without seeing an actual game.

 

[v0iDDr0iD]

Hey, just a short tip on religion. I've only played two games so far (Alexander, greek, noble, standard continents; Peter, russia, emperor, large lakes), but in both of them missed the early religions. As it happens, the arabians got their holy cities very close to my border (in both games!) so a worthwhile strategy in that case = building military and capturing the city++. They'll even become friendly soon cause you have the same religion

The point being that grabbing an early religion isn't neccesarily the only way - variation depending on the circumstances is key, and I'm guessing the same advice might affect other aspects of your game aswell (a typical symptom would be needing to get a specific wonder in civ3).

 

[bluetrin]

Firstly, thanks in advance to any advice this thread might recieve.

I've been player Civ since Civ2, but I've never been a particularly savy player. I typically have to play at warlord level to have a good shot at winning; noble tends to be unforgiving to me. This a rather embarassing position for a supposed civ veteran to be in, and thus I'd like to refine my game to more compitent level.

These are some things I've noticed about my playstyle that are probable problems, but I'm not really sure how to address them. Additionaly, if these notes suggest other possible problems in my overall understanding of the game, by all means try to shed light on what I'm doing wrong.

- I've generally left a lot of city micromanaging to the AI, which strikes me as crude and ineffectual, but at the same time, I don't seem to fare much better working manually- I'm obviously missing something here. I used to let workers pretty much play themselves too, but I've been much more hands on with them in my last couple of games (which seems to help). Likewise I'm sure I could gain a lot just from proper city micromanagement, but I really just don't know what I'm doing. Help?

- My build orders seem to lack vision and I tend to apply similar starting strategy regardless of which Civ I play (current favorites are Qin, Catherine, and Louie) which I could probably discribe based on my limited reading here as a (poor?) hybrid of worker chop and security.

- I tend to beline for an early religion (usually hinduism if I'm not playing India), but I understand that isn't really a viable strategy on noble+. Should I then focus on infrastructure/millitary early game? What general tech progression(s) would you recomend?

Maybe you are not trying to use your advance to fight enemies and finish them off ? You can try to fight for some cities before gunpowder and when you get cavalry. Try to not be always in war and keep the conflicts as short as possible.

Try to spread religion to some civs that will be your allies. It is nearly impossible to have a state religion and to be friends of an AI which has a different religion.

Anyway you don't need any micro at noble.

 

[lysander]

One thing I do in Civ IV that I never really did in previous visions is specialize my cities. You will be much more productive with a couple dedicated science cities and a couple dedicated military cities. You don't have time to build every useful improvement and enough military units in every city, even if you are playing defensively. Remember that the AI decides whether to attack or not based on your military.
This is where managing your own workers comes into play. A Science city should idealy be on a river for the excess trade. What you want here is enough food to feed science specialists, and enough trade to pay for research. So build lots of cottages and farms and avoid most other things. In the city, build improvements, and make sure to build GP acadamies here. Also, try and get as many religions in as you can and build lots of monastaries.
A Mil City should be productive. Idealy it should be placed near hills, which should be mined. Chop down trees to get your essential buildings built (granary, temple, barracks) and then have them build nothing but units. This will give you a large enough military so that your other cities won't have to worry about this. When you get a chance, put your heroic epic and west point in the same city. With your other cities not having to build units, you will be able to get most of the wonders you want, as well as have advanced cities.

As far as religion goes, it's definitely helpful, but don't beeline to get one if it's going to set you back a lot. You need to quickly get techs like bronze working (forest chopping is key to early production) agriculture, archery (you will get bullied if you dont have a lot of archers) and something to start building culture. Remember that you can still get Christianity and Islam if you miss the early religions. And it's not the end of the world if you end up adopting a neighbor's religion.

 

[Seanirl]

How to win at Civ: PILLAGE! PLUNDER AND BURN ALL THAT YOU FIND!

 

[Eagle_Seven]

I find that religion is icing on the cake. If you can't race to one of the early religions, focus on economy techs so you can get to a later religion. I was playing on noble with 13 civs on a standard map, and I was the first to Christianity (150AD). Strangely, I had enough open borders to convert most neighboring cities, and, lo and behold, 6 AI leaders converted to Christianity! Early religions aren't critical.

Other than that, I'd be repeating everyone else above. Although I think of cities as networks. I build city clusters so that the cluster is independent, but each city is specialized. I would say that on most maps, effective worker use in the early game is critical.

 

[RichardMNixon]

Welcome to CFC Guile!

Unfortunately I am also doing very poorly at this game, so I'll be hanging back and watching this advice.
It seems like especially now that you're not building roads everywhere, workers have less to do, I usually only build one or two. Is that about what everyone else is doing, or should I get a stronger infrastructure? (I play on Noble and am usually on top or at least middle of the pack before getting bored and starting a new game with a different leader, I have yet to stay in a game long enough for anything past Confucianism or Christianity to be founded...)

 

[Royal]

I do not go for early religions (Bud., Hindu., Jud.) because one game I got Buddhism but my Aztec neighbor got Christianity, and all my cities started to get Christianity!

 

[DaveMcW]

There's nothing wrong with your cities having another civ's religion. It means you can build another temple, and get even more happiness when you finally switch to Free Religion.

If you still haven't spread your own religion in the cities, missionaries are cheap!

 

[lysander]

Welcome to CFC Guile!

Unfortunately I am also doing very poorly at this game, so I'll be hanging back and watching this advice.
It seems like especially now that you're not building roads everywhere, workers have less to do, I usually only build one or two. Is that about what everyone else is doing, or should I get a stronger infrastructure? (I play on Noble and am usually on top or at least middle of the pack before getting bored and starting a new game with a different leader, I have yet to stay in a game long enough for anything past Confucianism or Christianity to be founded...)

I would definitely recommend more than one or two workers. Infrastructure is just as important as it ever was. The only difference is that it is not as mundane as it used to be. And if you are lucky enough to get a heavily wooded area, remember that a dedicated pack of workers can get that city to build an early wonder in about 10 turns if they do nothing but clear forests. Oh and a city can get bonus shields even if the trees you are cutting are not in its radius, as long as it is the nearest city you own.

 

[Mythrl]

I went for religion early my first couple of games but in my current game I decided not to and instead adopt someone else's religion to try and take advantage of the diplomatic bonus you receive by sharing a religion with someone. The main reason for getting religion that I can see besides the money bonus later on for having the holy city is to help with building culture faster in cities. So to offset that I chose a Leader with the creative attribute so all of my cities automatically start with +2 culture.

 

[Guile]

Thank you for the advice all. I'm still not faring well against noble level games, but I saw some improvement last night. I was able to keep my lands safe, but I lagged behind everyone technologically. I was about to make an offensive push on the only remaining civ on the same landmass wtih me, but their technologic advantage was enough to turn the whole adventure into a quagmire.

I'm keeping at it though!