I will never be as good as you at Civ 4.

[SickCycle]

Instead of answering your question I'm going to just post you links

I *highly* recommend looking at most if not all of Aelf and Sisiutils games, i also *highly* recommend reading there strategy guides. I added in some extras just to be thorough.

Sisiutils Games: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5320091

Sisiutils Strategy Guide for Beginners: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165632

Sisiutils Leader Traits: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=215506

Sisiutils Stack o' Doom: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4518097

Aelfs Comprehensive UU Guide: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=194003

(Aelf also has several games in his sig that you should read, same as Sisiutils)

10 FAQ's Before Declaring War by maltz: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/10faqsdeclwar.php

Triangle Diplomacy by polypheus: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/triangle_diplomacy.php

Monarch Strategy Condensed by eben: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/monarch_condensed.php

Specialization of Cities by iwas: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/specialization.php

I will say this, in order to progress you have to learn how to leverage your leaders abilities, if you look through the strategy guides I posted for you it will all be explained in detail.

As you go up in levels the AI will start to get bonuses to research, production, city maintenance, all kinds of things but keep in mind that the AI's biggest weakness is warfare. I don't know if your much of a warmonger but if your having trouble it's something to think about.

 

[bazola]

Well I definitely can relate. I've been playing Civ for near a decade starting with Civ2. For a very long time I was terrible and lost most of the time. Only in the past year or so of Civ4 have I finally started to get the key concepts, and once that starts the sky is the limit in terms of "difficulty" level.

So hold out hope! Maybe when Civ5 or Civ6 rolls around you'll be awesome at it

 

[Coase]

Rule #1: Have fun.

Find the difficulty level you enjoy playing at and try to win in a variety of different ways. Despite the prevailing opinion on this site, harder does not necessarily equal more fun. If that is your thing, great. But I leveled off at a reasonably low difficulty level, and now I find my challenge in variety. To paraphrase a wise man, I'm just too old for this . .. .. .. ., and I can't spend forever and a day being frustrated. Just have fun; there are many avenues to this.

 

[Datian]

Rule #2 (well maybe not the #2 but it's the second rule posted !) : don't expect to be "good" immediatly.
Civ is a complex and deep game : levels of difficulty don't mirror your skill with the mouse or your speed of reactions, but how much you have learnt about the game, and how well you can translate this knowledge in your decisions. It takes many tries to understand every aspect of the game, and even more to play accordingly to what you've learnt.

Just play for fun, and experiment tips and strategies.

 

[cabert]

Dave didn't mention the cottages so I'll do it!

I suggest playing a cottage spam game.
1) research the techs you immediately need for your capital first (agri/fishing/mining/hunting/Animal Husbandry), while you build a first worker.
2) Grow your capital while building workboats, warriors or scouts.
Use all your troops (yes, all, no one rests in garison) to scout the land around until you're having happiness problems.
Use your workers to improve the "best" tiles first.
Best is to be understood as most useful.
You don't need a mine first thing, because you need to work a food tile to grow first. Typically you want to improve a tile that can give you the most food first.
3) Expand. At size 4 or earlier if you have really high output, start building a settler.
Look for good cottage land = 1 or 2 food specials, the rest cottageable.
Even better, a large number of FPs can be cottaged and still give food surplus .
Go settle this one.
4) Workers!
You're going to grow fast with all this food. So you're going to need many workers to keep up.
You should never have to work unimproved tiles.
If your cities can grow in 3 turns, you should be able to improve a tile in 3 turns. And that's true for all cities.
A cottage takes 4 worker turns at normal speed if I'm not mistaken.
That's why at this speed I usually pair them. In 3 turns, they can cottage and road (optionnal) a tile. Don't forget to make sure you're acutally working those cottages.
5) Happiness
When you're able to grow very quick, you typically hit you're happiness cap early. Check my sig for solutions. In a typical cottage spam, you're going to want Hereditary Rule (through monarchy) early.
Use your massive food surplus to build more workers and settlers while you research it. You can also whip a few useful buildings (granary, library).

If you go on with this strat, you will have a small number of highly commercial cities.
With just 4 of those, you can rush to a space win easily or you can use your commercial power to buy yourself an army...

 

[Nevordan]

SickCycle, I will read all of those tonight before I go to bed. Thanks for that. I think I did read at least 4 of those, and they present more questions, but I have so many of them that I think it's best if I open up wordpad and just write an organized post and then paste it here later, rather than chew up the board with my sporadic noob questions. I'm not very good at thinking on the fly, and while that applies to posting here it probably is the very reason I keep losing in Civilization IV. I try to do too many things and lose track of my own thought process. What little is left of it.

Also, I haven't forgotten about posting a save game. What I'll do tonight/this morning is play a game, and then I'll try to post it here and see if anyone can comment on how I'm doing. I was thinking tonight that I would try the early aggression. I don't know who to do it with, but I was thinking Montezuma. Or Tokugawa. Or Napoleon. Heck, I guess it doesn't matter. I just want to kill something, haha!

 

[router]

Correct me if I am wrong but most of people use a customized map to win at higher difficulties, larger ones with a lot of land seems to be harder, is it right ?

And as someone said the most important think is having fun ...

 

[futurehermit]

start a game on these forums and post saves and screenshots. people will then give you lots of advice you can try to put into practice. best way to learn imo. also READ the game threads on these forums. also the best way to learn.

 

[SlipperyJim]

I'm not very good at thinking on the fly, and while that applies to posting here it probably is the very reason I keep losing in Civilization IV. I try to do too many things and lose track of my own thought process. What little is left of it.

Actually, your posts aren't too bad, but I think you've accidentally hit upon one of your issues as a warmonger. As Mr. Miyagi used to say, "Focus, Daniel-san."

Early wars in Civ4 are all about focus. Crank out a stack of offensive units (perhaps the lovely Horde O' Axemen) and go killing. Keep cranking out new military units to replace your casualties and defend the cities you capture. Research new military techs. Do nothing but wage war until you have achieved your goal. Don't build Wonders, don't whip out infrastructure, and don't waste your time on anything that's not part of the war. "Focus, Daniel-san."

After the war is the time to build your Libraries, Granaries, and so forth. Whip your conquered subjects until they bleed. Build up your empire! But only do it after you've finished conquering, because trying to be a Builder and a Warmonger at the same time will not work.

NOTE: This focus is only really necessary for the early wars. After your empire has grown and developed a bit, it will become possible to fight a more-limited war. In fact, there will be some circumstances (like when a friendly AI asks for your wartime assistance) when you might declare war but keep building. That can be a valid choice, depending on your circumstances. But early empires are small and their resources are very limited, so you won't get away with early warfare at anything less than 100% effort.

Also, I haven't forgotten about posting a save game. What I'll do tonight/this morning is play a game, and then I'll try to post it here and see if anyone can comment on how I'm doing. I was thinking tonight that I would try the early aggression. I don't know who to do it with, but I was thinking Montezuma. Or Tokugawa. Or Napoleon. Heck, I guess it doesn't matter. I just want to kill something, haha!

Play Julius Caesar and go SMACK something with a stack of Praetorians. They're so good that they'll compensate for any less-than-ideal strategic or tactical choices on your part. Just beeline Iron Working, find some Iron, whip out a decent stack of Praetorians, and go conquering!

 

[AnaNg]

Play Julius Caesar and go SMACK something with a stack of Praetorians. They're so good that they'll compensate for any less-than-ideal strategic or tactical choices on your part.

I have a major problem with praetorians.


Mostly it's that they steamroll over things so efficiently that I just can't stop with destroying one civ, then my blood lust blinds me to all other things and next thing you know my army is tiles from home, on strike and units are vanishing.

Fun while it lasts though!

 

[SickCycle]

praetorians aren't that bad..

i'd also actually build those granaries before i started whipping my units.. but maybe i'm the only one that whips units to rush

shaka and me have something special..

 

[Sjaramei]

Correct me if I am wrong but most of people use a customized map to win at higher difficulties, larger ones with a lot of land seems to be harder, is it right ?

And as someone said the most important think is having fun ...

Don't think they use customized map, customized settings is more common i think. (Aggressive AI and stuff need customized settings to be enabled)

And yes larger maps are harder to play at least vs AI.
Just think Duel map size and Inca rush and you'll get the idea

 

[cabert]

larger maps make domination and conquest a lot harder.
They also make warmongering in general a lot harder.
So they are indeed harder overall.

 

[SickCycle]

he's right tho.. no one will ever be as good as me.. so naaaaaa

 

[cabert]

To the OP,

The strategy involved in cIV is mostly choosing the right tool from a toolbox.
And getting better at this game is like having more tools in the toolbox and knowing when to use them.

Here are some basic tools for which you really need to know the use :
- fast growth
- commerce (cottages or others)
- production (tile improvements, $rushing, pop rushing, bonuses)
- great people (types and uses, how to generate them)
- warmongering (units, counters, tactics)
- civics

Those things are covered in the manual, the civilopedia and the article sickcycle mentionned.
After that, there are loads of more subtile tools, like diplomacy (bribing AIs to war each other for instance), tech trading (what to trade for what, when), city specialisation, specific beelines, ... that you may want to know because it's a lot of fun.
Some are shown in the articles above, some you may want to discover yourself (it's more fun this way, but losing while trying something new isn't always funny, depends on you).

 

[popejubal]

Dave didn't mention the cottages so I'll do it!

I don't understand. You say that as if Dave didn't mention cottages.


Cottages are amazingly good (at least after they mature into villages and towns). It is also possible to survive without cottages at all. The big thing to keep in mind that your research has to come from somewhere.

Your two primary options are cottages and specialists. Cottages make lots of commerce and that commerce is translated into research and cash through the use of the slider bar. Specialsits make research or cash directly.

The big difference is that cottages will make lots and lots of commerce and you can get very big amounts of research through large empires. Specialists tend to generate less research per food available, but since you're farming your tiles instead of cottaging them, you have more available food. Specialists also generate Great People which is nice and you can also stop using the specialists if you need your cities to grow like crazy (for instance, you need to whip or draft lots of stuff in one or more cities). This option slows your research quite a bit, but increases your production amazingly and you can choose to do this in just a few cities without shutting down research in your entire empire.


The biggest deciding factor for me is the terrain and the leader.
Lots of snaky rivers and financial civ = cottages
Lots of food resources and few rivers with Philosophical or Spiritual leader = specialists

Obviously, it's possible to combine the two and a hybrid economy can be exceptionally powerful, but I'd suggest picking just one of these and going all out to explore the strategy. Amusingly (at least it's amusing to me), I enjoy cottage economies much more, but I tend to do better with specialist economies. I don't know why.

 

[Nevordan]

Well I played a few quick games to try out the early axeman rush, and I can tell you that it just wasn't working out for me. 6-8 axemen isn't enough. Well, I managed to take one city, yes, but when I went for the capital, the only city left, they all died. Is it meant for only taking one city?

In my first game with Montezuma, I built up about 15 jaguars and pretty much destroyed George Washington and took his capital, destroying all other cities. Sadly I accidentally burned down the Jewish holy city. Which begs the question, how do you know what's in a city? I don't know if there's wonders in there, or what-have-you. My only options are "Install a new governor!" or "BURN, BABY, BURN!" I can't examine the city?

Also noticed a bug today with tribal villages. The technologies they give me aren't worth a damn. What I mean is, they give me "the secrets of a new technology" and I hear Spock's little dialogue, but then I don't actually get it. I have to research it myself. In my last game I got Agriculture and Archery, but then I couldn't build farms or archers, and Archery and Agriculture showed up in the list of techs I could research. I guess hunting for tribal villages is a waste of time then.

Anyway, I guess that's that. The game angers me, so I'm not going to be playing it again until I read all these articles thoroughly. Then I will make another attempt, save the game, and then I guess I'll be back to annoy you all with more questions and whining. Don't forget the cheese!

P.S. I guess I should mention that I only have vanilla Civ 4 with the latest patch. Been too freaking broke to buy anything other than essentials for the past few months. Ah, well.

 

[AnaNg]

Well I played a few quick games to try out the early axeman rush, and I can tell you that it just wasn't working out for me. 6-8 axemen isn't enough. Well, I managed to take one city, yes, but when I went for the capital, the only city left, they all died. Is it meant for only taking one city?

No, in many cases 6-8 axemen will be fine for a 2-3 (maybe 4) city empire. It's tough to say what you ran into but two things come to mind:

Did you wait for your stack to heal up before trying to take any other cities?
And what civ did you go after? If it's a leader with a Creative trait (and/or they've built up some nice culture in their city) then you're going to have to contend with cultural defenses as well as units. If I'm going to take down a creative leader I usually just wait until I get cats, it's just easier for me.

 

[Nevordan]

It was Elizabeth. She had 3 archers and a chariot. *shrug* There were only 2 archers in York and they killed one of the axemen, taking me down to 5. I sent 2 archers to defend York while it was in rebellion and sent the other Axemen to pillage her horses (also guarded by an archer, which wounded one of the axemen badly) and mine. In the end I had only 4 axemen and they all died to her archers, go figure. Maybe I should bring 12 next time. They all had City Raider, and 3 of them had City Raider II from fighting barbarians. Still not good enough.

Reading Sisiutil's Montezuma conquest game is giving me hope, though. If he can take Hatshepsut's capital with two stacks, then I probably should have built two stacks myself. At least one could have replenished any fallen soldiers from the first battle while they healed, rather than be an idiot and send a weakened army into a capitol. I'm a moron.

 

[Underdawg]

Obviously, it's possible to combine the two and a hybrid economy can be exceptionally powerful, but I'd suggest picking just one of these and going all out to explore the strategy. Amusingly (at least it's amusing to me), I enjoy cottage economies much more, but I tend to do better with specialist economies. I don't know why.

Hybrid is the way to go! Especially on the higher levels where city maintenance is more costly, you almost have to rely on scientists for a good chunk of time in the first quarter of the game while waiting for cottages to develop (cottages just take too long to grow, so they don't become quite the powerhouses until later). Plus, early scientists to settle/lightbulb/academy provides a big boost.

Of course, if your cities lack food specials, then a specialist oriented economy is almost unviable in those cities (they need at least one food special IMO)