How long does it take to be a good player?

[bonscott]

Thanks for you guys' advice and encouragement. To make things short, I think my problem is that I don't exactly know what are good decisions for a specific situation, e.g. what building or unit to build in the next turn, if I should accept a proposal from AI? etc. I guess the only way to improve is to play more games and gain experience? I also can't balance things very well. For example, in one game, I was trying for the space race and I only focused on technology leading to Rocketry, but then I have the lowest score of the 7 civilizations and rather weak military units. It seems so hard for me to have the highest score on Noble level. It is frustrating at times, but at least I learned something from each game.

TCGTRF, do you mind sharing your 'cheat sheet'? It will be extremely helpful for my situation.

1) Don't worry too much about your score. All that matters is that you win. On my cultural victories I'm usually last in score. But I won the game. In general outside of a cultural game I try to be in the top 3 (on standard map) and at least 2nd in tech. That seems to be a good balance so far for me. By the way, the main driving force behind the points is amount of land you have, population, number of wonders built and tech. So if you have only 6-8 cities on a standard map you may be near the bottom in score even if you're right up there in tech and military. Again, nothing wrong with that. The only thing that concerns me is my power rating.
2) Step down from Noble. By the way, have you run the tutorial? Even though I've played 1000's of hours of every civ game from the first, I still ran through the tutorial and Sid helped me get used to the various concepts of the game. Then I played one game on the easiest level, Settler. I moved up one level my next game and still easily beat it. So up to Noble it was and I've played that for many, many games. I've now just moved up to Prince level.
3) Only 30 hours? I think I spend 30 hours on some single games.
4) As for trying to Space Race, I think for me it's only been because it was the easiest route to victory that late in the game. Space race isn't something you need to plan for from the beginning like a cultural victory. Typically I do a SR because things didn't quite go right for a conquest or domination or as a side project while trying to get a diplomatic.

Good luck and happy civvin'!

 

[J_RocKeT76]

Sleep helps

 

[Admiral8Q]

I've found that you can't always judge how well your doing by the Civ3 standards. I've just started a game on the ice age earth and started in Japan. I thought I was doing terrible, I only had 4 cities, but now I'm at the top of the score. I'm not sure what to think yet of Civ4, but I have to say it's very well thought out for a game.

I haven't figured out the type of game I'm comfortable with yet.

 

[ZippyRiver]

It seems so hard for me to have the highest score on Noble level.

In addition to the other advise, DON"T PANIC! You do not have to be top dog for quite a while, don't worry about that so much. Focus on YOUR empire, not theirs. Esp early on. At least one of the AI is going to get a super sweet position that fits their traits (financial civ getting a 14 river tile start, in the city window). Case like that they are going to get ahead. No biggie. The other thing, is get some cottages down VERY early. They don;t look like much, and you would think they take too long to grow. But those turns go by pretty fast early on and before you know it you got bags all over your screen. Thats when you start catching up, and passing the other civs.

As you progress a little, not only plan your cities with what you build, but plan your empire in the same fasion. If I enter a phase that requires a military build-up, (most)nearly all cities go on unit production and I will switch civics to match that (police state, vassalage, theocracy). If I am in a building phase, I will switch to OR for +25% on buildings and what ever other civic might help that is available. I try to stay in each phase as long as possible.

This is where missionaries/workers/work boats/settlers come in handy. If you are in building phase, and you have all the needed buildings completed in a couple of cities and still some to build in others. Use that period to build things that don't get bonuses under either. That way you have your supply of that type of unit, so when you do switch to military phase, you not wasting turns on no-bonus junk.

 

[hotdeck]

Thank you all. I can't believe there are so many warm-hearted ppl in this forum. This site rocks!

 

[ZippyRiver]

Thank you all. I can't believe there are so many warm-hearted ppl in this forum. This site rocks!

Awww, shucks. It's only because your post was more inquisitive. A number of ppl with the same problem start threads like "Civ4 sucks lollypops" or something follwed by a bash, more often than not without any kinda of details. You should see how "nice" ppl are to them.

 

[Liquidated]

Amen, I typically avoid the General Discussion board for exactly that: too many whiners.

Threads like this one are too far and between.

The rest of the board is extremely polite though I've found. Lots of great people playing civ.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Liquidated]

opps! repost

 

[Harry Haller]

I think that psychologists estimate that for most things, it takes about 5000 hours to become "expert" at it. So you have a way to go before you become a Civ expert. Keep playing. If you are unsure about which of 2 strategies is better, save the game, play one strategy, go back to your save and try to other, and see which turned out better.

With respect to the Sula walkthrough, I have rarely seen a starting position that good in my own games. A lot of your ultimate success depends on what you start with. So you can't necessarily compare your progress to that walkthrough if you don't have a similarly good start. As someone else said, regenerate a few times until you get a map that looks hospitable.