How to go about things in game?

[Tk1]

Hi folks,

Guess you can tell from the title of this thread that I am new to the game. I like this game because it has tons of different features and functions. But the trouble I am getting is that it leaves me with too many decisions to make.

For instance, it never stops asking what you would like to research next or what would you like to produce next after a scout is made.

And I am much confused by Religion and Government in the game. What do you understand about these two and how they relate to one another?

How you folks go about steps like this when you first started playing game?

Hope you don't mind slow questions like these

Tk1

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Check out the War Academy (top navigation bar->Civ 4->War academy) for lots of good articles.

Direct link: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/

Welcome to CFC!

 

[Darth Caesar]

Well a good place to start is reading the manual

Welcome to CFC

 

[Sisiutil]

First off, welcome to CFC!

Civ is indeed a complex game, which is why so many of us love it. As has been mentioned already, read the manual, then move on to the War Academy. I humbly suggest reading my own Beginners' Guide (link in my sig).

To answer some of your specific questions, in brief:

For instance, it never stops asking what you would like to research next or what would you like to produce next after a scout is made.

Formulate a plan at each stage of the game. What are you trying to do? Expand and found cities in all available territory? Conquer a neighbour? Build a wonder? Found and spread a religion? Decide upon a "mini-goal" that will assist you toward victory and make other decisions accordingly.

And I am much confused by Religion and Government in the game. What do you understand about these two and how they relate to one another?

Religion affects diplomacy, chiefly; share a religion with another leader and he/she will like you, adopt a different religion and he/she will disdain you. How much of a difference this makes to your relations can depend on other factors such as the programmed personality of said leader and other diplomatic bonuses and demerits. But religion can count for a lot--usually as much as 4 to 6 diplomatic points in your favour (or against you), which is huge. Only fighting a war with or against a leader comes close to that effect.

As for government--called civics in the game--most of these don't interact with religion except for the religious civics (natch), on the far right of the civics screen. All of these have their uses at various stages of the game. I tend to like Organized Religion in early/mid-game peacetime to help city builds, Theocracy for warmongering, and Free Religion in the late game to boost happiness and research. I'll use Paganism in the early game, even if I have a religion in several of my cities, if adopting said religion would earn me a powerful nearby enemy. I'll occasionally use Pacifism, but usually only when I'm playing as a Spiritual leader and can adopt it without incurring several turns of anarchy.

As you have more questions--and you will--be sure to come back to the forum and ask away. We're nice here.

 

[Tk1]

Thanks folks for all the pointers you showed me. They're all very precious information.

Talking about religion, what exactly is it for in terms of getting victory? Can you say conquering another state by sending in a group of missionaries?

And most of the time, you really don't have much to do except moving workers around tiles to do improvements and then just hit enter to end the turn. Don't know and understand what I am researching quite often too.

Maybe I'm really lost

 

[itg]

Nah, it just takes practice.

Missionaries don't conquer cities or anything, but if you have the Beyond the Sword expansion, you can win diplomatically through the Apostolic Palace (often called an AP or Religious victory). The war academy has a good article with the details.

 

[Sisiutil]

And most of the time, you really don't have much to do except moving workers around tiles to do improvements and then just hit enter to end the turn. Don't know and understand what I am researching quite often too.

There are several other things you can do on each turn, including checking to see if it's possible to whip anything when you're running slavery, checking all your trade deals to see if any new ones are available or can be renegotiated, reassigning citizen tile assignments and/or specialists, etc., etc.

As for research, have a close look at the tech tree. Each technology gives you a new ability such as seeing the location of strategic resources (and accessing them), the ability to build new military units, buildings, or wonders, changing civics, and so on. Most techs also lead to other techs that grant additional abilities.

As I said above, set some in-game mini-goals for yourself (I call them mini-goals because the big goal is to win the game). Use the tech tree to guide you to the achievement of these mini-goals. Here are a few examples.

• In the early game, many players like to focus on acquiring the "worker techs" that allow your workers to build new tile improvements and access resources. The early game worker techs include the Wheel, Mining, Hunting, Agriculture, Pottery, and Animal Husbandry.
• If you want to try an early rush, go after military techs that reveal strategic resources and/or enable strong units. Early rush techs include Animal Husbandry (for horses), the Wheel (for Chariots), Bronze Working (for Axemen) and possibly Iron Working (for Swordsmen).
• If you want to build a wonder, pursue the tech that enables the wonder as well as a tech that allows you to access a resource that accelerates the build of the wonder. For example, if you want to build the Pyramids, research Masonry, which both enables the wonder and allows you to build a quarry on a stone resource (assuming you have one nearby) that will make building the Pyramids faster. If you want to build the Oracle, research Masonry (so you can quarry marble) and research Mysticism, either Meditation or Polytheism, and Priesthood.

Try to base your goals on your leader and his/her traits, civilization, starting techs, and map. If you're playing as Rome, for example, you should be going after Iron Working ASAP (starting with the Mining tech in hand gives you a head start) to build Praetorians, Rome's awesome UU, then using them to conquer your neighbours; founding religions and building wonders is a waste of time for the Caesars. If you're playing as Gandhi, however, it makes more sense to either research worker techs to take advantage of India's UU, the fast worker, as early as possible, and/or leveraging the Spiritual trait and having Mysticism as a starting tech to found a religion.

 

[Tk1]

Thanks Sisiutil!

I have read your guide. It's concise and really useful. By the way, I've watched some gameplay clip in YouTube and see roads all over the place on the map. They are not only connecting major cities but also many other smaller buildings. How you do that and what good does it do to have roads connecting everywhere?

 

[God-Emperor]

Roads are good, they do useful things for you...

Roads connect resources to your cities so you get the bonuses from having them (like +1 health from having corn).

Roads connect your cities together to share resources and to form trade routes which bring in commerce.

Movement is faster on roads, so it is good to have them in many of your tiles. It is better to kill the invading barbarian before he pillages the pasture on your horses or the mine on your copper than it is to do so afterwards.

Barbarians and civs you are at war with will sometimes (well, often) destroy your roads, so it is a good idea to have multiple routes to make it harder to cut your cities off from reinforcements, your trade network, and your resources.

 

[Tk1]

I'm beginning to realize that. So say I have built a farm using a worker, then next I should do is to create a road so it connects to a city is that it? There are 2 buttons I notice for constructing roads, how to use them?

 

[Sisiutil]

An ordinary tile (i.e. with no resource upon it) does not need a road to be useful to the city. In the early game, when you have few workers and lots of unimproved tiles, you may be better off to only build roads where they're absolutely needed:

• Definitely build roads on any tile with a resource to ensure you get the full benefits of the resource.
• Build roads to connect your cities with at least one direct-as-possible route.
• Build roads to connect at least one city in your territory with a road that leads to a city in a neighbour's territory. In the early game, this will enable foreign trade routes with your neighbour, which bring in more commerce than domestic trade routes. This will also enhance the chances of religions spreading to your cities.
• If you have to build something on a tile that costs you extra movement points (such as a hill, forest, or jungle), it usually makes sense to build a road there too, to get the most out of the movement point you sacrificed by getting the worker onto the tile. This concern, however, doesn't necessarily apply to India's fast workers.

There are several buttons pertaining to roads. The two main ones are for building roads (available with The Wheel) and for building railroads (available with, surprise surprise, railroads). Other road-related command buttons are for automating workers, but we've already talked about why automating things in Civ is bad, haven't we?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

You don't need to road a resource on a river if you connect to the river.

 

[7 Up]

I too am a beginner and just beginning to love this place. CIV seems like a terrific game.

 

[Tk1]

I started out playing with roads last yesterday, but ended up eliminating AI Greek The game does indeed get you addicted to it.

Anyway, stupid things I did was building roads out of ordinary tiles. Now I understand only resources needed to be connected by roads, you learn something new everyday don't you?

You mentioned river and neighbour's territory, there are 2 questions. When a resource is separated by a river, you need to have bridge to run over it, but it requires further research which doesn't appear in early game. My question is, once I have bridge available, do I need to go back to the resource tile and do a "build road" one more time?

I always refuse AI's request to open border, what are the pro and con?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Nope, once you get construction you don't need to do anything to lose the movement penalty for crossing a river.

You should open borders with the AI for trade routes (extra commerce) and for scouting out their land. If someone is really unpopular it's probably best not to open borders with them though.

 

[Wafflecakes]

You don't need to wait until bridges to connect the resource, the river also acts as a trade route so a road on either side will connect it.

With regard Open Borders;
Pros: You get to scout other civilisations territories or if necessary move your scouting units through a cultural bottleneck. As well as this you get a diplomacy bonus of +1 with the respective civilisation, this can be handy if you plan on being friends.
Cons: The AI civ will get to scout your lands (which they can see anyway, being the AI), or alternatively they may be able to get their settlers to land that's otherwise blocked off from them.

 

[itg]

You don't need to wait until bridges to connect the resource, the river also acts as a trade route so a road on either side will connect it.

With regard Open Borders;
Pros: You get to scout other civilisations territories or if necessary move your scouting units through a cultural bottleneck. As well as this you get a diplomacy bonus of +1 with the respective civilisation, this can be handy if you plan on being friends.
Cons: The AI civ will get to scout your lands (which they can see anyway, being the AI), or alternatively they may be able to get their settlers to land that's otherwise blocked off from them.

Actually, you can still block land with open borders. The AI won't send a settler through unless it could've gotten there with closed borders, too. Convenient, huh?

 

[*Svart*]

sweet! are you sure of this?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

In BtS they don't send settlers through your open borders, but they did in vanilla and warlords.

They will send settlers on boats though.

 

[*Svart*]

good new... i didn't noticed that..