How to ask for help?

[OneLeggedRhino]

By the way, for anyone looking to improve their game, start posting your games. I can't recommend that highly enough. And focus on why you make your decisions, don't just post "I teched this and won a war."

First, writing out your thinking really helps you understand your play, and if it doesn't work, you can go back and see why you made a decision and where you went wrong. Second, there are some really excellent players on these forums. Sometimes it's a bit painful to have your play picked apart, but it will make you a stronger player.

And don't worry if the first game you write doesn't get a lot of followers. As you write more and get used to taking the right screenshots and clearly and concisely telling a story, people will start reading your games and giving you tips.

(And developing that writing skill will help in everything else you do, too.)

 

[lymond]

another thing that came to mind (and that is not aimed at you Um The Muse) I crashed here in the forums over the last 2-3 years into people that played on Prince/Monarch and tried to argue about their games when they received advice from really experienced players negating and arguing almost every sentence the player offering advice gave...

that's actually not good attitude since in a lot of times the player arguing is just plainly wrong and can't stomach the fact that he is wrong.

Such people usually after few weeks abandon this forums with absolutely 0 progress towards getting where they wanted to get at first.

Another bunch of people came to forums throwing their 1500 AD saves with "look what I have done" gotten ripped apart and becoming absolutely desilusional about themself... another example of bad attitude for newer players seeking "advice". One could argue that they probably didn't seek advice in the first place.

Good point, V, but unfortunately all that is more likely a result of character flaws that cannot be fixed, at least within the confines of this forum

 

[Um the Muse]

event log offers such info...you just need to scroll and be patient (you can eventually get up to 4000BC, it loads slowly).

it's true that tech trades throw this off a lot, but the shadow's value falls off a bit after first 100 turns anyway. The point of aquiring Alphabet is usually very easily identified (like aquiring 3 techs at 1 year is pretty significant mark of "hoa hoa here happened something!").

Disagree about city placement... how you want to learn how to place cities without actually looking at a good example of placed cities? When I was learning this game I came here regularly to ask for dotmap of current situation.
and you can ask the shadower later of course.

Seems to me like you want to be in negative attitude just because someone played your map better. That's not good approach to better himself. You have to stomach the fact that some players are more experienced with civ and just watch and learn.

It's lesson I learned long ago... no matter how good you think you are, there is always someone out there who is better then you. You have to live with it, it doesn't change.

Huh. Never knew that about the event log. Do you know if there's an external read-me or something? That might be good to point out if ArchonWing or somebody gets this article written up

I'm not trying to be bitter, and I'm sorry that I came across that way. First off, I haven't had anybody post a shadow to one of my games (I've only posted one thread with my own ideas of how to settle) so this wasn't personal. Secondly, I realize that I'm not really good at dotmapping. I probably should post another game asking for help with it.

 

[Archon_Wing]

another thing that came to mind (and that is not aimed at you Um The Muse) I crashed here in the forums over the last 2-3 years into people that played on Prince/Monarch and tried to argue about their games when they received advice from really experienced players negating and arguing almost every sentence the player offering advice gave...

that's actually not good attitude since in a lot of times the player arguing is just plainly wrong and can't stomach the fact that he is wrong.

Such people usually after few weeks abandon this forums with absolutely 0 progress towards getting where they wanted to get at first.

Another bunch of people came to forums throwing their 1500 AD saves with "look what I have done" gotten ripped apart and becoming absolutely desilusional about themself... another example of bad attitude for newer players seeking "advice". One could argue that they probably didn't seek advice in the first place.

But the same could be said about some rather arrogant players that post bad attempts at sarcasm or vague one liners because they don't feel like helping (Probably because they have seen the same questions too much.) I use the word attempt because it's not funny and surely not to a new user. So it's a two way street.


What is blatantly obvious to us is not to a new player. It's hard to take this in account when bringing up advice when some of the newer players don't know about hotkeys and menus. And the manual isn't very helpful-- mine is outdated and plain wrong in some parts.

I could say "build skirms/quechas and conquer Noble." Sounds easy enough to do, but if they could understand that they wouldn't be there. We should always assume people play a level that challenges them, otherwise they wouldn't need to be there.

It's much harder to teach something, than to just know it.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

But the same could be said about some rather arrogant players that post bad attempts at sarcasm or vague one liners because they don't feel like helping (Probably because they have seen the same questions too much.) I use the word attempt because it's not funny and surely not to a new user. So it's a two way street.


What is blatantly obvious to us is not to a new player. It's hard to take this in account when bringing up advice when some of the newer players don't know about hotkeys and menus. And the manual isn't very helpful-- mine is outdated and plain wrong in some parts.

I could say "build skirms/quechas and conquer Noble." Sounds easy enough to do, but if they could understand that they wouldn't be there. We should always assume people play a level that challenges them, otherwise they wouldn't need to be there.

It's much harder to teach something, than to just know it.

That's the reason I have put off writing a guide on Tech Brokering, and pushing the AI down a tech line. But you can't really blame players who give the one line answers, as there is a massive amount of new player posts asking for advice when all they do is summarize what happened in their game. Person I could give a rats ass about who did what in a huge wall of text. Walls of text tend to make me want to not give very precise advice about what they should have done, instead telling them to war earlier with such and such unit will do them much more good. If they don't know how to war, and what to war with it is why they lost.

 

[zig_zac]

By the way, for anyone looking to improve their game, start posting your games. I can't recommend that highly enough. And focus on why you make your decisions, don't just post "I teched this and won a war."(...)

Words have consequences, you know. Expect them soon

 

[Larwin]

The problem I see with Civ IV is it takes too long to get good advice and the game takes too long to finish without getting advice anyway. Or maybe some people like to take a week to play a game and others can finish a game in a few hours. Some people spend more time thinking about there next move than others. I have seen videos that the guy spends hours talking about his next moves and other videos the guy just keeps playing without pausing to think.
So maybe I should watch 50 or 100 videos before playing again then try to play from what i remember.

 

[Tatran]

Watching all those videos is a waste of time.
You'll hardly remember anything when you're playing your own game.

The hard way works best. Means losing a war or worse losing the game.
You'll learn from your mistakes.
Think about what went wrong and come up with a solution.

And sometimes (trying to win at Deity) luck isn't on your side.

 

[Um the Muse]

Alright, I'll eat my words. I just downloaded a savegame of somebody's shadow, and I really did have a good idea of what that person did in the early game. I can see somebody being able to take that and using it as a benchmarker as to when you should more or less build new cities or wonders and when to get technologies as well as an idea of what to research.

 

[Larwin]

Watching all those videos is a waste of time.
You'll hardly remember anything when you're playing your own game.

The hard way works best. Means losing a war or worse losing the game.
You'll learn from your mistakes.
Think about what went wrong and come up with a solution.

And sometimes (trying to win at Deity) luck isn't on your side.

Basically just keep trying til I succeed ? thanks about the best advice i seen so far.

 

[vranasm]

Alright, I'll eat my words. I just downloaded a savegame of somebody's shadow, and I really did have a good idea of what that person did in the early game. I can see somebody being able to take that and using it as a benchmarker as to when you should more or less build new cities or wonders and when to get technologies as well as an idea of what to research.

i actually did this back in time a lot...copying gameflow of Grashopa/TMIT by myself... eventually got good grip on what they did...

it actually helps with worker optimization, you know the city places, dates and techs, what you don't know how to achieve all of that in the same time if you get some exceptional save (and trust me I got some exceptional saves I mimicked by 2 turns difference which was pretty solid, but 2 turns can mean you don't hit the Oracle->CS as someone else ;-))

what is even better to check just the final point to know which techs he got, but don't look at the order ;-) and run the start couple times to get the techs in right order