I stink at this game

[automator]

No strategy here. I just need to vent.

I plain stink at this game. I worked my way up from Chieftan (bought the game the weekend of the release), learning the ins and outs of specializing, stack creation, etc. Finally started to win Noble games in a variety of ways: Domination, Space, Time, Diplo ... so I started at Prince. Even won a Prince game by Domination by doing a Terra map and completely taking over the "new world". After using that same strategy twice it got boring, so I went back to continents. Got whupped by the AI a few times and went back to Noble. Now I can't even win at Noble. I do well, then I get pounded.

Grrr ... maybe after Civ6 comes out I will have finally become a seasoned Civ4 player.

 

[MBJODET]

I'm just starting and know what? It's a hard game. So many things to keep track of. I think maybe they should call it, 'Sid Meir's everything but the Kitchen Sink'. Unless 'kitchen sink' is under 'Research prepare food'.

 

[Naokaukodem]

You don't stink at it. Civ4 is a dorky game.

The fact is that some fat asses directed Firaxis in order to "improve" the gameplay so much... so that they would personnally enjoy it. Some of them even got hired by Firaxis, people that are used or were used to post in this very forum.

By all ways it is not you who stink. It is the game. If you don't find a echo of that fact on this forum, you simply are on the wrong forum. (and I don't know if there is a good forum on Earth for this - dorks are everywhere)

 

[potatokiosk]

You may want to try playing a previous version of civilization before playing civ4. The previous versions have less to keep track of, and you may be able to get a previous version for a moderately cheap price.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Automator,

I don't think it is the level of complexity, the game stinking (what kind of person hates a game, but still trolls its forums?), or your inexperience. You admit you've beaten a prince game before. Well hey... you're one up on me. I'm an old hand at the civilization games. I've been playing for 10+ years and I still don't play above noble with my preferred difficulty being Warlord. Now granted I could probably give the computer a run for its money at higher difficulty, but it just never appealed to me because I like to play a game where I'm in complete control...that is what is fun for me.

Now as for your issues, perhaps you could expand a little where you think your game is falling apart and we could give you thoughts. Obviously there is the "Strategy Guide" forum which is a great resource, but if that hasn't helped then just post up here and the community will have some advice I'm sure (since we have some really helpful AWESOME players here).

Keep your head up man, and if worse comes to worse just play the tutorial again for the confidence and move on up. Nothing wrong with beating up the computer...you won't hurt its feelings.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I'm not trolling. That's just the way it happened. The game is too hard, there is no lame excuses here.... it's hard, period.

And I just gave the reasons why it is as so.

No need to fool yourself, claiming Civ4's perfect! Alleluia! I'm so happy! Naokaukodem is a monster! A troll!

It's pretty useless and obnoxious.

It has defects, nothing on this world is perfect even if you enjoy it so much apparently...

 

[CarpeDiem]

i dont find it hard unless you make silly silly mistakes


though terra sucks that ai doesnt get on new world alot sooner

 

[Naokaukodem]

i dont find it hard unless you make silly silly mistakes

Well it's fine for you...

 

[Oddible]

Good post Feyd. In CIV3 I loved the games at Monarch - super fun. I had to really struggle and micromanage to beat Emperor. Of course I remember how long it took me to get into the nuance necessary to beat Monarch and even Regent.

I've been in a similar funk as the OP. Handily beat Noble but Prince has been giving me some serious whoopin, so much that it just wasn't fun and I dropped the game for a bit. Then a couple weeks ago I saw the expansion was coming out so jumped into the strategy forums and read some guides to improving my play and I've just beat my last two Prince games and had fun doing it.

BTW, there are quirks in this game, some existed in previous game, some didn't. Like... map position - if you start out suck, you will probably suck the whole game. Also, you may have one AI that picks on you the entire game hurting your and his score and growth for no apparent reason (fortunately this works the other way around as well and AI will pick on eachother while you sail past them in tech).

Cheers - venting is good!

Probably some Paradox fans on the boards - you want a steep learning curve on a global strategy game - try Victoria, till your brain bleeds.

[Naokaukodem, its not all about you - go play Mario Cart]

 

[Naokaukodem]

go play Mario Cart

I pretty love this kind of stupid answer to show how stupid fans can be.

Then a couple weeks ago I saw the expansion was coming out so jumped into the strategy forums and read some guides to improving my play and I've just beat my last two Prince games and had fun doing it.

Bwa ha ha! It should have been noted on the booklet, "check the forums if you can't play and stop whinning!"
Bwa ha, to need the forums to play is a mark of it is a hard game, not to say bad game.

That's pretty funny how the fans on this forum and probably others too can blind themselves about Civ4 defects... I'm not even really saying Civ4 is a bad game, I'm just saying it's hard, I don't see what is difficult in recognizing it.

Handily beat Noble but Prince has been giving me some serious whoopin, so much that it just wasn't fun and I dropped the game for a bit.

You even acknoledge it yourself, but strangely you seem still unaware of the fact!

 

[Oddible]

OK, I was wrong, it IS all about you Naokaukodem. My bad. Thanks for trolling...

Try to re-read the previous posts without being so self-focused and you might see things differently. I read the forums to improve my play from Noble to Prince - neither of which are beginner levels. You don't have to read the forums to play (like you do in other strat games like Victoria / Europa Universalis, etc), just play beginner levels. Seriously, every game is 'Hard' or it would be no fun - playing the same level over and over until you get the skill / technique to beat it (yes, even Super Mario). I just don't understand you point - what are you trying to say?

(Shh, if you listen really close, you can almost hear Naokaukodem clicking his refresh button on this thread so he can ensure that he gets every other post - glad you're having fun on the forums anyway).

 

[vilemerchant]

The game is not hard, it's just complicated. Try following a few of those succession-games or democracy games or whatever the hell they are where people play as a team and discuss their moves and strategy openly, soon you'll find there's a lot of really simple ideas that do make a hell of a difference over a whole game. The difference between winning and losing in civ is not as great as it seems. You only need to get to 1 tech first and you might trade it for 6 other techs, which allows you to get another tech first or build that great library or whatever. Just a few turns advantage in simple management can make all the difference.

 

[dh_epic]

Why is a challenging game a defect?

I thought Civ 3 was defective -- when you could win the game at 0% research, get the AI to do ANYTHING if you had a little bit of gold, and get a crazy snowball effect from opening up a small lead.

This reminds me of the comment from someone that said "redcoats used to be able to defeat units 100 years more developed than them! then they fixed it! THAT SUCKS!" ... some people don't actually like games, they just like tearing through a dumb AI. They were probably the slow kid at the playground whining about losing at tag, and always found every excuse to not be "it".

 

[Bartholomaï]

I think the problem is that you have so many difficulty levels in this game.
When you can't get higher then warlord, you think you stink.
But you don't, no you do not stink.
On Warlord you don't have advantages or disadvantages, you start equally with the others civs.
So if you can win on Warlord level, you are better then the AI which completly understands the game, while you are human and make mistakes time by time.

At higher levels, the AI has so many advantages the game is hard, and you have to be aggresive, and declare war on your neighbours, even if those civs like you.

Me too have the feeling I stink, but I try to learn to be more aggresive, because I'm quite a builder.

But just keep on playing civ and you will become better

 

[Quotey]

Eh, isn't Noble the fair level?

 

[Scizor2120]

Noble is the closest thing to a fair level. The AI gets a bonus upgrading units (for some reason they get a bonus upgrading even in settler), war weariness, and possibly a few other minor things. Its still the closest thing to a fair level.

 

[LoopyLewis]

I don't know whether it's just me but I seem to go through games where I do extremely well throughout, start to finish, and then in the next game (same difficulty) I can't do anything right. It's all based on luck. I don't think I stink at this game (I tend to play at Noble), but some games can be a real uphill struggle.

My advice is to become a warmonger If something in the game is going wrong, chances are it's because you aren't killing the AI

 

[Naokaukodem]

OK, I was wrong, it IS all about you Naokaukodem. My bad. Thanks for trolling...

Try to re-read the previous posts without being so self-focused and you might see things differently. I read the forums to improve my play from Noble to Prince - neither of which are beginner levels. You don't have to read the forums to play (like you do in other strat games like Victoria / Europa Universalis, etc), just play beginner levels. Seriously, every game is 'Hard' or it would be no fun - playing the same level over and over until you get the skill / technique to beat it (yes, even Super Mario). I just don't understand you point - what are you trying to say?

(Shh, if you listen really close, you can almost hear Naokaukodem clicking his refresh button on this thread so he can ensure that he gets every other post - glad you're having fun on the forums anyway).

I don't see YOUR point when you come here and say "hey Naokaukodem it's not just about you why don't you play Mario Kart".

'nough said.


By the way a good game should be playable even at most difficulty levels, and Noble and Prince are not even in the difficult category in my book.

To be really complete, a game should be playable at higher difficulty levels, from the easiest to the harder, jumping from one to the other naturally, with some game overs between. But Civ is not a game where you have a fast game over. You invest yourself and invest time in it. The game over comes pretty late. For that, Civ is special. Hence the particular treatment with respect to the difficulty. The goal is to play a FAIR game where you have a chance to win. When you did that, learning the mechanics of the game, there is still a challenge: the upper difficulty. Etc... but if the difficulty is raised too high from the start (lower difficulty levels), there is not anymore this challenge to jump to a level to another, the game is over, even if you did not "complete" it. And I feel pretty sad to have bought a game that I can't complete but the easiest difficulty and LESS INTERESTING levels. So the real interest of the game goes for the tree choppers and the pop rushers etc... that's not my conception of Civ, for me Civ is a great game when you build and rule a whole country and have wars and diplomacy with others. No matters how you get here, I can't care less of the game mechanics. They are here only for a dork to say to other dorks on the Internet "oh look I owned you and no i didn't cheat". Great.

 

[Sisiutil]

I just think Civ--all versions--is a challenging game because of its complexity. As a result, you can have good games and bad games at the same level. When it happens to me, it's usually because of a lack of concentration.

Case in point: my best games thus far have been the ALC games, which I post here on the board. To a great extent that's because of the advice provided by those who respond to the threads, but to some extent it's because I just stop playing and take a break between each set of turns. My best games for which I don't get group-mind advice are, again, those I play slowly, with frequent breaks.

I say this because of the well-known enthralling nature of the game, that "just one more turn" appeal it has. But guess what, at 2 AM, after playing for six hours straight, you just might not be in the best frame of mind to keep up with the AI! Same problem after a tough day at work. At least that's been my experience.

I can't speak to playing at the higher levels, since I'm a Prince-level player myself (though I did manage to beat Monarch just recently, after 12 attempts). It sounds like Naokaukodem's frustration is that the same strategies that work on the lower levels don't work at the higher ones, even if you try to adjust them accordingly. Instead, you have to rely on tactics that some people consider "tricks", like chop- and pop-rushing, slingshots, and so on. I've noticed several posters who feel that these sorts of tactics are dishonourable or dishonest in some way.

I can sort of understand that. To a large extent, these tactics are needed because the AI at the higher levels has an "unfair" advantage and you need to claw your way back somehow in order to compete. Saying the AI is not smart enough is a legitimate beef about the game, but programming an AI is difficult--which is to say, time- and resource-intensive and therefore expensive. We've probably been given the best AI that Firaxis et al could afford to give us. Could they give us a better one if they accepted less profit (assuming they are making a profit)? Maybe. How much better, though? There's such a thing as the law of diminishing returns, after all. And the simple reality is that Firaxis is a business and their main goal is to make some money off of this. No profit, no expansion packs, no next version.

Beyond that, my own feeling is that these tactics are part of the game, and none of them, in and of themselves, guarantee success. They can certainly help, but in my experience thus far the same basic strategies have taken me through to all the levels: specialize your cities, pay attention to your military and power ratings, balance your research, maintain your diplomatic relations.

I enjoy playing the game and still find it challenging, engrossing, and most of all, FUN--even after several months of ownership and many hours of gameplay. It was well worth the 60-some-odd canuck bucks I paid for it. Could it be better? Of course. But it's pretty darn good just the way it is and I like it just fine.

 

[automator]

Wow. So much anger in what I had thought would be an ignored post.

I made this post because I'd just quit out of a Prince game that I thought was going well. I'd given myself a nice start, had my pyramid built, founded christianity, and had started and won two little wars with neighbors for a couple cities a piece. I had the top score and was ahead of the AI in techs. Then three civs declared on me at once and ended up destroying all my infrastructure and all but two cities.

So I was in a funk.

After the post, I started up a Noble game. It's still going, but now that its 1860 and I have control of nearly half the world and am building infantry while the rest of the world is on muskets ... and I started the Apollo project ... I don't stink at the game, I stink at Prince level games.

Maybe it's because, like Sisiutil offers, I feel the "tricks" are dishonorable. I will chop rush a wonder, but I limit myself to one per game. I don't think planning out a tech tree to achieve the perfect slingshot is good, honest game mechanics. I try, as best I can, to make the game replicate real-life situations. I don't war with friends; if everyone is "friendly" or "pleased" with me, I'll ask for tribute, and anyone who doesn't tribute me falls under my axe. Likewise, I don't trade with my enemy.

I just wish there could be a level in between Noble (which I find almostly laughably easy), and Prince (which is a stress headache to come in the middle of the pack).

I'll always enjoy Civ games. I played some 16 hours this weekend for some reason ... oh yeah, it's that "one my turn" thing going on. But I think it's time to switch to Mario Kart for a bit.