HELP

[Marvin86]

Hey guys,

long time Civ 5 player here (over 1500 hrs). Tried out civ 6 and couldn't get into it at all, so i picked up civ4 a few days ago on a steam sale.

I started playing on Monarch difficulty since I played deity on Civ 5. Maybe this was a mistake because I have NO idea how to defend against enemy unit stacks. For example my last game Shaka DoWed me and came at me with a unit stack of like 40 units. I got my ass kicked. I had about 20 units in my border city but he reduced my city defense to 0% in like 1 turn, he had like 12 siege units so he proceed to attack and collateral damaged all my guys and took my city easily.

couple of thoughts
1. Maybe i'm too used to civ 5 one unit per tile?? The AI has no idea how to do combat in 1UPT so its very easy to exploit and maybe I got too comfortable and used to this...
2. I tend to like to play peacefully but I do not neglect building units.. do I just need to build a ton more units when I have aggressive neighbors?
3. Maybe I just need to swallow my pride and play an easier difficulty level as i learn the game?? As civ4 seems to be very different from civ 5..

Any help/advice would be appreciate, thanks!

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Hey,

3. Probably not, unless you find the AIs research too fast.
2. That's a classic mistake, sitting pretty and doing one's own stuff. People do that all the time (me included) when they're not actively aiming for a victory. Just passing time and going with the flow, if you will. The game never fails to punish the player for being too passive.
You need to build units only when war is at the gate of your City. If your diplomacy tells you you're safe and you're not planning an invasion of your own, units are just a distraction. Improving your knowledge of diplomacy goes a very long way. But if you're building units, yes, that's a serious matter and you should try to rush production in every way available.
If you wanna exorcise the peacemonger symptoms you've been suffering, one thing you could do is try an all out warring game. It will be a lot of fun, you'll probably conquer your whole continent. You'll rule over a desolate territory while your maintenance will shoot out of orbit and you'll go broke before the game's ending but... whatever. All in all, that's good, clean fun and a learning experience.
Trying out both extremes of the spectrum is a way to understand both their strengths and weaknesses. A good step towards finding the middle ground that lets you war while keeping your research up.
1. Attack initiative. Attackers are fielded against the toughest defender they can face. Siege is the easiest way to ensure that the toughest defender will be easy pickings ; having a technological advantage is another.
In the situation you describe, either you could have tried to counter them with your own siege, either you need a large amount of units that are immune to collateral damage (ex : machinegun), either you need even larger numbers, so that their collateral damage doesn't matter.
It takes a very long time for the AIs to assemble stacks of 40 units. Even Shaka doesn't get there before super duper units are unlocked. Just fighting earlier is another way to ensure you're not facing such stacks.
Otherwise, tactics : flank them with mounted units and damage their siege ; use your own siege and clear their troops with melee. If you're fighting within your territory you can make use of your road network to get initiative. If you're fighting in their territory, have a stack so large that they won't dare attack it, threaten a city, they'll stack it up, clear their stack.


Of all these points, I feel that 2. is most important, player psychology and strategy.
3. is up to you and what tastes are yours.
1. is a matter of tactics, trial and error and experience.

Have fun,



Edit : oops, sorry, I'm sure I misread that :
"2. I tend to like to play peacefully but I do not neglect building units.."
I think Archon_Wing addresses the point. Units in time of peace are a drain. If you build them, make them count.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Like civ v, you want to bribe him to war if he seems scary. If he demands small things, give it to him and it gives you a 10 turn peace treaty. If he plots war, you cannot be a target.

Distance is also a huge factor. Try not to casually exoand towards warmongers unless you want to start a fight.

Unlike Civ V, you don't want him to close onto your cities. The best way to weaken a stack is to use mounted units to attack. If they won or withdraw, they damage several siege units. If you can destroy their anti- mounted first, you can cripple their siege and render their attack ineffective. Then you can send in your own siege.

Usually I use some siege to weaken them a bit, and then use shock(stable and barracks gives enough for combat 1 and shock which gives bonus vs melee) ihorse units to counter spears

Abuse roads towards them. Trim woods and never let them camp it.

Another tip is hill abuse. Settle hill cities towards warmongers.
Archers+walls+hills will buy you lots of time.

I Wouldn't suggest building units until you think they will go to war. Remember with the whip, you can produce a lot of defenders in a few turns.

The key sign is known as wheoohrn aka we have enough on our hands right now if you mouse over all the options to bribe war and it is in red. BUG Mod shows this info clearly. When they are in state, war is being planned.

We generally keep our armies small, in fact, the meta is to not get archery unless you have no strategic resources. Chances are your tech and growth is slowed down early game atm.

 

[lymond]

Just a few quick bits of advice for now, Marvin. Civ IV is quite a complex game and 5/6 went in very different direction. So I do recommend really stepping back and learning the game. Strategy & Tips forum is where you want to be. Focus far less on combat for now, and much more on learning the basics of expansion and empire management. Workers are far more important in IV, and almost always your first build. FOOD is king. Slavery is godly.

I'd play at least on Noble for now while learning the basics. Civ IV is far more punishing and even far more rewarding for the effort.'

Get BUG/BULL and BAT mod. BAT is standalone, and BUG/BULL can be installed in custom assets such that saves don't have mod conflicts..great for forum games. However, I use BAT for all my personal games. (basically all the same stuff but BAT had graphical enhancements)...think EUI for V

I'd honestly just ignore the combat related advice for now. Like BiC said in response to question # 1, it takes experience. Keep in mind that units cost maintenance, so you don't overbuild if you don't have to, but once you learn how slavery works, you can get army together in no time. More experience with diplo helps a lot too, and diplo is more transparent in IV, especially with BUG. Below is a great article put together so time ago by a team of forum members translating underlying code into an easy to read breakdown of leader personalities:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-illustrated-1-know-your-enemy.478563/

No need to focus on that now, but nice to use as a reference. (there are a few nasty dudes in IV and some of those dudes are quite the same in V)

 

[ztrapon]

I'd play at least on Noble for now while learning the basics. Civ IV is far more punishing and even far more rewarding for the effort.'

Highly advice against that. Basically anything below Prince teaches you nothing - it babysits you, and you're not experiencing the game at all. What you'll do is sit there and delude yourself you're doing things right when building every wonder, every building, getting every religion, and so forth.

I know people who enjoy that though, never feeling threatened and just building effortlessly. To each their own, but if you wanna learn the game and become better, there's no inherent value in winning alone. Monarch is an excellent starting level -- but at the very least Prince.
Just holding up at that level means you're doing things right.

The only thing I'm going to say to you is more units. Every newbie does the same mistake, focusing way too much on buildings, and way too little on units. Maybe something like 1 in 5 of all your cities should be creating military units at any point, to keep up with the AI's unit creation. And not just archers, preferrably a mix so you can intercept as well.

The addon lymond mentioned above (BUG Mod) is something you should get ASAP. Apart from just improving the interface, the added details help you understand things a lot better.
For example: in regular Civ, you have to press F11 and select Power in the graphs, to see your opponents' military size in relation to yours. In BUG Mod that ratio shows up as a number on the scoreboard, so you'll always have an eye on it. This helps greatly so you get a sense of "where am I in relation to others".

 

[Archon_Wing]

Noble and Prince are almost the same thing though.

Yea I understand most experienced players see little difference between chieftain and noble, because the AI dies when farted in their general direction but you might have forgotten what it was like to be new,. New players are often beaten by themselves because they haven't figured out what to do; the AI interfering is another story. I think it's far more important to focus completely on finding settling spots and prioritizing resources. I wouldn't even try to finish a game; instead keep rolling new maps, take every start (no rerolling) and try to refine your first 50-100 turns or so as these are the most important turns.

The only thing I'm going to say to you is more units.

Actually I don't agree with that at all. That is very game dependent. While building too many buildings is a bad thing, overbuilding units will ruin your economy. Build units if you intend to war or if you can't maintain good diplomacy. It'll lead to bad habits if you move up and get sacked by maintenance. (been there). The default should be, at least for learning or in the case you can rush, to be build enough units for city guards and spawnbusting. In any case, you should build units for a reason. And the more you can get away with, the better. That is something true of many a strategy game. If you can survive with 4 warriors instead of 6, then you've gotten yourself a little advantage.

Now workers on the other hand.

As an aside, a good tactic is to get open borders and move a scout into other civ's territory. You can check out what kinds of units they have, and more importantly, where they are going. It's something I forget to do too much.

 

[ztrapon]

Actually I don't agree with that at all. That is very game dependent. While building too many buildings is a bad thing, overbuilding units will ruin your economy. Build units if you intend to war or if you can't maintain good diplomacy. It'll lead to bad habits if you move up and get sacked by maintenance. (been there). .

A bad habit is neglecting military. It works to an extent at lower difficulties, but is nearly impossible when you move up. That's why I advice against lower difficulties, because they essentially teach you a different game than you'll be playing in the end. It's like when people being playing chess -- lower difficulties will teach you how the pieces move, but you won't develop if all you do is move pieces like a headless chicken. When you have even rudimentary understanding of strategy and tactics however, it doesn't matter if you win or lose you'll still become better.

What he experienced sounds to me like the typical progression into the Medieval. That's when the AI starts cranking up unit production, and it often coincides with empty territory running out so they get more hungry for war as well. That's when you're punished, even wiped out, if you've been neglecting unit production.

And I'd say overproducing units is generally better than overproducing buildings at least. You can build the fanciest cities you want, but if they all crumble the moment you're invaded they won't matter. And it's easy to reduce numbers if you feel you've overproduced (or why not invade a weaker civ?), but very hard to rapidly build up defense if an enemy approaches.

I will however modify because, it's not exclusively more units, it's having the right units also. Archers are easily neutralized by siege, so ideally even on defense you should have a squad of Horse Archers or Knights to intercept incoming stacks, or defensive Catapults to complement them.

 

[Archon_Wing]

To me it's more like running before walking. It's impossible to remember when you couldn't walk so it seems second nature.

Also, why spend hundreds of hammers and beakers especially on out of the way things like knights (catapults, some HAs, and axes/maces would do well enough) when you can just manage diplomacy? If you are on a map with a bunch of civs that prefer HR and Sitting Bull (not that uncommon), it makes no sense to build a army for the sake of building an army especially when diplomacy is mostly free.

Even if you do spawn with psychos who plot at pleased, there are always war bribes or getting to pleased and constantly begging for peace treaties. And for rapidly building up against a sudden attack, this mostly applies to daggers which aren't that common and also some leaders are more prone to it. Otherwise, you can use "we have enough on our hands right now" as a better sign to appear as you can quickly analyze who their war target is.

If multiple warmonger AIs attack in these cases, you are hosed, regardless if you can

Obviously there are cases where you can't get people to pleased fast enough and they are going to war earlier, but that's usually something you deal with before 0 BC and rarely about 40 units. I mean, there's plenty of peaceful culture victories on high levels where players do not tech past Printing Press and any kind of army would be little more than a roadbump if they have any at all.

So yea, it's situational and not something that I would say is useful every game, whereas building workers and improving tiles applies to most games.

 

[lymond]

ztrapon, I get you point on difficulty level and agree that playing lower difficulty limits the challenge and can hinder the learning experience. The point now though is that for a completely new player (and playing 5 or 6 is in no way prepares one for playing this game) I don't think it matters that much at the moment. My point is that Marvin just needs to practice the basics right now which has nothing to do with combat, armies and fight wars. Just practicing the early turns and making good decisions with works, builds and techs. Not even completing games, but practicing the first 50 turns or so.

However, I don't agree fully on the units thing. I do agree that about buildings, but there's no need to overbuild units. Mainly barb protection is a concern early, so with spawnbusting and a couple of decent units like an axe or chariot to protect your initial expansion is key. Once you start making plans for conquest then one can start to consider building up an attack force, but early that is a heavy cost to keep units lying around. Ofc, one needs to gauge the environment and diplo situation to understand if a large standing army is needed to fend off possible attacks.

Ofc, thinking more long term in the game you are correct, but even then you need to consider the types of units you are keeping around. Just continuing to build units that you won't use and have to pay to upgrade at some point or just delete is counterproductive. Armies can be generated very quickly once one learns how to do so.

So, basically high level play requires a balance of all these aspects and a lot of high level players go as long as reasonably possible with minimal armies. Full blown unit production should have purpose.

But back to point, again, I think the OPs focus right now should have little to do with unit production and combat. That can come later. In fact, his focus doesn't need to have anything to do with winning right now.

 

[Fippy]

I think it's both important, some players want the guided games thingy (post map, play slowly) and some want to enjoy how crazy that game can be for now while you know not much (i have fun memories on that lol).

Some basics on war danger.
Every round the game does some checks, and if you are unlucky you become a chosen target.
Once picked, AIs rarely change their targets or war preparations.

Important factors for those checks are relations (Shaka will always plot at annoyed if other checks are positive, with ~60% chance at cautious and ~10% at pleased).
And other stuff, like space to expand. AI units all are put into categories like attack, scout, city defend, reserves and so on).
While expanding, more units are settler escorts or defenders so there's less danger.
Also distance & border tension, it's well worth thinking about if that city right next to Shaka's land makes sense
And ofc the power of you and other AIs, they want to be stronger (or think they are) when attacking.

So, keeping those factors in your favor plays a huge role.
Notice how much pleased relations reduce war risk, so we should look at diplo first as most important thingy.
Normally you need around ~4 positive relations points to leave cautious and reach pleased, there are hidden (not with mods like BUG, why it's so important..all about info ) points for each AI in every game too and Shaka starts with -2 while Gandhi or Zara give +1 to players i think.
So you need to do more for Shaka.

There are spike bonuses for diplo, and some that build up more slowly.
Gifting them a nice tech often gives +4 "fair" trade bonus instantly, and gifting a city always does (even +5 usually).
Once tech trading is available, keep that option in mind. If a guy like Shaka asks for a tech, that can easily be the most important decision in your game so far. Give = pleased (hopefully) = safe, refuse = war target if unlucky.
Ofc you can take those matters in your own hand, gift yourself and that can be a good & important move.
So can be investing into one settler for a city you put close to him, and then liberate & getting your big bonus this way.

Slow building diplo bonuses are for example open borders, +1 after 25 turns and +2 after 50.
Resource trades, also +2 maximum. Religion, and some more complicated ones which are not important for now i think.
By learning to manage those bonuses, it's possible to overcome negative ones (like you traded with our worst enemy, you refused to stop trading..) and keep good relations with all AIs.

Refusing demands for techs (politely asked or treatening) can result in instantly being a war target.
Refusing trade embargos, joining wars or other AI stuff just gives negative diplo, but does not trigger war checks.
So always be extra thoughtful when asked for techs.

As you become more experienced with diplo, you will consider better when to build units.
That's important cos diplo does not cost your cities production, and another negative effect of sitting around units is upkeep cost.
Building defensive units should always be combined with scouting first, if you are one of 3 Shaka neighbors send an unit like scouts or chariot (better movement) out and keep an eye on where he stacks.
If he collects units that are usually set as attack (stuff like Swords, siege, several mounted) in a close city, that means you are his most likely target currently. Or he might stack near another AI, and your scouting unit can keep you updated if that changes.

Blindly building units can seriously reduce your research potential, an important circle cos you would rather have 1 Mace instead of 2 Axes.

(i know i repeated some points that others have mentioned before)

 

[ztrapon]

So, basically high level play requires a balance of all these aspects and a lot of high level players go as long as reasonably possible with minimal armies. Full blown unit production should have purpose.

But back to point, again, I think the OPs focus right now should have little to do with unit production and combat. That can come later. In fact, his focus doesn't need to have anything to do with winning right now.

Compared to juggling diplomacy, or trying to evade war until you can draft Riflemen -- I'd say my crude advice seems a lot simpler actually. But I get your point.

And I know how diplomacy works, all the other elements too. But all those things aside, my overarching point remains: if you have the option of investing hammers into units, and leverage them to gain more of everything - including buildings - through the capturing of cities, that's generally going to be the better option (if you want efficient win). This is again, general advice, and obviously not in absurdum - to the point of no tech progress, neglecting Granaries, or making mortal enemies with the entire board.
I fully understand there are people whose goal when starting a new Civ game, is not to wage war, but to build and let the game progress into later ages. But that doesn't change anything really --like I've said many times before huge army is the best way to Conquest and Domination (goes without saying), Science (more cities mean more science), Culture (more cities mean more gold, means you can set culture slider without lagging behind in science). Only exception is maybe Diplomatic. It's just a consequence of how the game is constructed: 1) how science scales with cities, and 2) AI is better at eco than warfare.

 

[6K Man]

Some general advice if you're new to Civ4:

1. Play on noble until you win regularly on noble. Play on normal speed, normal map, default settings.

2. Build a worker first. Build a second worker before you build a second city. Have at least 1 worker per city (or more, if you find yourself working unimproved tiles)

3. Research things that allow you to hook up resources (e.g. Agriculture, Mining, Animal Husbandry, Wheel, Bronze Working) first. Research Archery if AH and BW don’t reveal Horse/Copper.

4. Improve food first, then other special resources

5. Aggressively chop forest to hurry production (Granaries, Settlers and Workers in particular).

6. Switch civics to Slavery on learning Bronze Working and sacrifice population to hurry production.

7. Settle city sites with the following priorities: a) food adjacent to city site b) strategic resources (Copper, Iron, Horses) c) other resources you don’t already have d) riverside or on fresh water

8. Most cities only need a Granary and Forge. Only build other buildings in cities well-suited to them (e.g. Barracks in cities with lots of production, Libraries in cities with 4+ food surplus or 10+ commerce)

9. Research priorities: Writing (for Libraries), Alphabet (for tech trading), Currency (for wealthbuilding, buying/selling techs)

10. Don’t build wonders unless you have the resource for them, and not at the expense of your expansion. When learning, fewer wonders are better.

11. Keep expanding until you run out of room or money.

12. Building wealth and running specialists will save you when you run out of money.


Read Strategy and Tips. Follow old threads where good players do play-throughs of their games.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Over-building units is a lower level move. You truly should only be mass producing units if you are prepping for offensive war/breakout, or if you are the target of an AI in wheoohrn and diplomacy has failed. On lower levels, you can spam military units until the map is filled and your economy can handle it. On higher difficulties, even mass producing units too soon where they sit around for a dozen turns can be brutally punishing to your economy (say if you forgot to check for tech prereqs and you mass produced elephants with the intent of mass upgrading to cuirassiers but forgot gunpowder).

So if you want to practice for higher difficulties, I would say practice building as few units as you need to at any given time. Another key is to know your neighbors. If your neighbors are say Alexander Montezuma and Shaka then there's no such thing as over building units as it is highly unlikely you'll escape a DoW in such a situation.