[BTS] I'd like some help and tips, playing my first game

[paulojose]

Hello everyone,

I just created an account here on the forum, and I would like some help with my game. The save is attached below, plus a screenshot of my current game.

This is my first game of Civilization 4. I am playing as the Netherlands on Noble difficulty and currently on turn 185 at 1250AD.

I am trying to achieve a victory by conquest or science.

I am trying to get advanced in Science, focusing on having Libraries and Universities in all my cities.

The biggest problem started when Egypt declared war on me a few turns ago, and I was not expecting to be attacked by a stack of almost 10 units in a same tile. I managed to survive, and now I believe I am ready for a counterattack, but I do not feel confident. How should I assess whether or not I am prepared to attack the AI? I plan to conquer Egypt, what would you recommend I do? My current plan is to build some Musketman as soon as I finish the research of Gunpowder.

And most importantly, could you take a look at my save and tell me what I am doing right and wrong in general? What should I have done at a certain point, are my tiles being worked correctly, and other things?
I appreciate any kind of help and criticism, thanks for your attention!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Welcome to CivFanatics, just had a quick look and a few thoughts:-

1. You should get the BUFFY Mod (or BUG) which will make managing your empire easier without changing the game!
2. Check out this awesome thread for lots of advice.
3. You are losing a lot of production by having cities unhappy because they are not defended, get archers into Mastricht and Deft ASAP.
4. You're preparing for war but building a Colosseum to try and manage unhappiness. Research Monarchy, adopt Hereditary Rule, ensure every city has a garrison and you'll be fine. When you're going to war you need to commit to it. Likewise you're probably better building research rather than Universities at this stage.
5. I'm not much of a warmonger apart from early on so I'll let others comment on that.
6. You've got a bunch of cities with no food and/or no water, Leiden was for iron presumably, Nijmegen should have been 1SE to be on the river and get the corn.
7. Delft is a terrible city, what was the idea behind that?

Hope this helps, don't want to be too harsh but we've all been there learning this awesome game.

 

[paulojose]

Welcome to CivFanatics, just had a quick look and a few thoughts:-

1. You should get the BUFFY Mod (or BUG) which will make managing your empire easier without changing the game!
2. Check out this awesome thread for lots of advice.
3. You are losing a lot of production by having cities unhappy because they are not defended, get archers into Mastricht and Deft ASAP.
4. You're preparing for war but building a Colosseum to try and manage unhappiness. Research Monarchy, adopt Hereditary Rule, ensure every city has a garrison and you'll be fine. When you're going to war you need to commit to it. Likewise you're probably better building research rather than Universities at this stage.
5. I'm not much of a warmonger apart from early on so I'll let others comment on that.
6. You've got a bunch of cities with no food and/or no water, Leiden was for iron presumably, Nijmegen should have been 1SE to be on the river and get the corn.
7. Delft is a terrible city, what was the idea behind that?

Hope this helps, don't want to be too harsh but we've all ben there learning this awesome game.

Thanks for the reply!

1. I didn't know about this mod! I've installed it in the game, but apparently it doesn't work on saves that are already in progress. Is that correct?

2. Thanks, I'll take a look at this thread.

3. Got it, I'll do it now. I don't remember this mechanic in Civilization 5, I have a few hours in that game.

4. I was avoiding researching religion, ok, I'll adopt Hereditary Rule. But why research Science instead of universities? I thought that researching Science is good in the short term, but in the long term it would be recommended to build science buildings.

6. Yes, Leiden was to obtain iron. But it turned out that it took a long time to get it, I had to make a settler and build the mine, and I was surprised to find that I needed to connect the city with a road to then obtain the iron. Is the corn you're talking about the one that Lisbon has? When I built the city, that corn was already with Portugal, If I remember correctly. And which cities exactly are "out of food"? Maastricht has several tiles with food, Nijmegen too, which cities exactly are you referring to?
7. Hahaha, it really didn't seem like a good idea. Snow and desert are two tiles that are not suitable for building cities, but I thought the tundra would be suitable, but apparently it is not.

It's okay! I'm open to any criticism, thanks for the advices!

I'll start doing the corrections you warned me about.

 

[Tecumseh1]

If it's your first game hard to give much feedback as there is way too much stuff to cover. I suggest 80/20 rule. Spend 80% of your time learning the first 20% of the game (early game). Play 10 games on random maps and stop around 1AD. It's more helpful if you post a starting position or early game and ask for feedback as that's where you are making the biggest mistakes.

And the sticky posts in this forum have some good starter info. Plenty of reading to keep you going through your first 10-20 games.

 

[paulojose]

If it's your first game hard to give much feedback as there is way too much stuff to cover. I suggest 80/20 rule. Spend 80% of your time learning the first 20% of the game (early game). Play 10 games on random maps and stop around 1AD. It's more helpful if you post a starting position or early game and ask for feedback as that's where you are making the biggest mistakes.

And the sticky posts in this forum have some good starter info. Plenty of reading to keep you going through your first 10-20 games.

Got it, I'm reading Fippy's guide and it's been a great help.
I'm also watching your video of Pacal's early game, it's a nice source of info, thanks.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

apparently it doesn't work on saves that are already in progress. Is that correct?

Yes, unfortunately.

 

[Tecumseh1]

You can use BUG mod on existing save if you install BUG mod in "CustomAssets" folder. There is option to do that from the mod's installer. This will put all the mod files in your "My games\Beyond the Sword\CustomAssets" folder and you don't need to load a mod as it's always there when you start the game.

Edit: This allows you to use BUG with other mods

 

[Gumbolt]

Main thoughts.

Too few workers. All that forest and jungle to chop! You need 3-4 more workers here. Stop improving tundra and hills. 4H tiles provide no food for growth.

You are a bit late for cottages now. I would probably work 2f3C over 2f1H forest tiles.

Tough start with no nearby horse or metal.

Probably building too many buildings. Colloseums/market places etc on noble add little value on Noble. Same for the university.

With gunpower and pults you could attack here or wait for cuirs.You can trade for ivory to build war elephants too.

Shame deft was not a coastal city to grab the silver. 2f3C is not bad.

 

[pmarc]

You probably already got a lot of ideas from the feedback here and reading the guide, but just some ideas about approaching this map in the big picture... There are basically 4 good food and commerce sites in your starting area, which you occupied with Amsterdam, Maastricht, Utrecht and The Hague. Maybe space for one more city on the east coast if things were moved a bit to split off the deer to its own city. I don't think any of the further expansion west and southwest was really worth it: you get huge maintenance penalties with distance and risk war by being so close to Hatshepsut, even though she's one of the least aggressive leaders. (In particular settling Rotterdam must have really hurt your economy.)

So where do you go from there after you grab those 4-5 cities? With so few good land of your own, you're looking to take cities from the AI early. Portugal is a better target geographically. Without a strategic resource like copper, iron or horse you might have to buy it via trade with the AI, it's usually very expensive but sometimes still your best bet... Also you will get a resource from one of the cities you conquer and can cancel the trade after. If all else fails Catapults + Archers can work if you have enough catapults, with enough collateral damage any unit can do the cleanup.

I see you got Construction at a reasonable time in the BCs (could have been a bit faster probably but certainly good enough on Noble), so perhaps the mistake was to go conquer faraway barbarian cities rather than your closest neighbor.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

And which cities exactly are "out of food"? Maastricht has several tiles with food, Nijmegen too, which cities exactly are you referring to?

Unless you are settling to grab a critical resource cities should have a food resource in the first ring (although second is ok with a Creative leader like WvO), farms don't count so I would say Nijmegen, Rotterdam and Dfelt are food poor. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation but that's a general rule you should try to follow. Do you have the 4000BC save?

 

[Fippy]

Tundra starts can be tricky as well.
"Delft" makes for a great example thou

There are several unused river tiles west of Amsterdam.
Delft could have made use of them if placed 1 tile further east, despite growing slow FIN cottages always have some value.

Don't pay much attention to blue circles (city placement suggestions or worker improvements), make your own plans.
I just turn them off in options.

 

[jorissimo]

On a positive note: if this is literally your first game and you're playing on Noble with frankly poor starting land, you're not actually doing badly at all. I remember losing on Settler. Admittedly, I was 11 and didn't know anything about the game mechanics, but still. I think with the exception of some city placements, things generally make sense in your game. Of course there is a lot to learn and optimize now, but I'm actually impressed.

 

[paulojose]

You can use BUG mod on existing save if you install BUG mod in "CustomAssets" folder. There is option to do that from the mod's installer. This will put all the mod files in your "My games\Beyond the Sword\CustomAssets" folder and you don't need to load a mod as it's always there when you start the game.

Edit: This allows you to use BUG with other mods

I tried doing the installation like this, and it didn't work. There is no other option in the installer, just this one to select the directory.

Main thoughts.

Too few workers. All that forest and jungle to chop! You need 3-4 more workers here. Stop improving tundra and hills. 4H tiles provide no food for growth.

You are a bit late for cottages now. I would probably work 2f3C over 2f1H forest tiles.

Tough start with no nearby horse or metal.

Probably building too many buildings. Colloseums/market places etc on noble add little value on Noble. Same for the university.

With gunpower and pults you could attack here or wait for cuirs.You can trade for ivory to build war elephants too.

Shame deft was not a coastal city to grab the silver. 2f3C is not bad.

Thanks for the reply.
So the idea is to cut down the trees? The thing is, tree tiles give hammers, so cutting them down will remove that. In Civilization 5 I usually left the forests standing to later build Lumber Mills on the tile, but here it seems it's better to cut down the trees... And what to do with this tile later?
Ok, I'll work 2f3C.
Ok, I'll stop building universities and build Science and Wealth.
I've read people saying that Cuirassier are a strong unit, problem is that I'll need to research Meditation, Polytheism, Aesthetics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Nationalism and finally Military Tradition, so it will take a lot of turns so here I think I'll just rush some Musketeers and try to win with that.
I didn't think of settling on the coast because of the snow, snow gives nothing. What 2f3C you are referring to? On the coast there are some 1f3C.

You probably already got a lot of ideas from the feedback here and reading the guide, but just some ideas about approaching this map in the big picture... There are basically 4 good food and commerce sites in your starting area, which you occupied with Amsterdam, Maastricht, Utrecht and The Hague. Maybe space for one more city on the east coast if things were moved a bit to split off the deer to its own city. I don't think any of the further expansion west and southwest was really worth it: you get huge maintenance penalties with distance and risk war by being so close to Hatshepsut, even though she's one of the least aggressive leaders. (In particular settling Rotterdam must have really hurt your economy.)

So where do you go from there after you grab those 4-5 cities? With so few good land of your own, you're looking to take cities from the AI early. Portugal is a better target geographically. Without a strategic resource like copper, iron or horse you might have to buy it via trade with the AI, it's usually very expensive but sometimes still your best bet... Also you will get a resource from one of the cities you conquer and can cancel the trade after. If all else fails Catapults + Archers can work if you have enough catapults, with enough collateral damage any unit can do the cleanup.

I see you got Construction at a reasonable time in the BCs (could have been a bit faster probably but certainly good enough on Noble), so perhaps the mistake was to go conquer faraway barbarian cities rather than your closest neighbor.

Thanks for the reply.
I didn't know that the further away from the capital the worse the maintenance, I don't remember having that in Civilization 5. Or does it happen on civ 5 as well and I didn't know?
In fact I didn't attack the barbarians' cities, I used the warriors to get to know the land and attack the barbarians but not their cities.

Unless you are settling to grab a critical resource cities should have a food resource in the first ring (although second is ok with a Creative leader like WvO), farms don't count so I would say Nijmegen, Rotterdam and Dfelt are food poor. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation but that's a general rule you should try to follow. Do you have the 4000BC save?

I see. Yes I do have the 4000 BC save, I'll attach it here.

Tundra starts can be tricky as well.
"Delft" makes for a great example thou

There are several unused river tiles west of Amsterdam.
Delft could have made use of them if placed 1 tile further east, despite growing slow FIN cottages always have some value.

Don't pay much attention to blue circles (city placement suggestions or worker improvements), make your own plans.
I just turn them off in options.

Indeed It would have been better to have placed the city one more tile to the right, and what is FIN cottage?
Yeah I tried to follow some of the AI's blue circle, I'll disable that now.

On a positive note: if this is literally your first game and you're playing on Noble with frankly poor starting land, you're not actually doing badly at all. I remember losing on Settler. Admittedly, I was 11 and didn't know anything about the game mechanics, but still. I think with the exception of some city placements, things generally make sense in your game. Of course there is a lot to learn and optimize now, but I'm actually impressed.

Thanks! It is indeed my first game on civ 4, but I do have some hours on civ 5 and civ 6 so maybe that helped me to not playing even worse haha.

Also, I'd like some help with this "Unit Stacking" thing. It's really weird having 16 units on the same tile, it's really confusing. Also, the archers and catapults not being able to attack from range is also really weird.
How could I plan an attack on Heliopolis? For now I'm thinking of waiting the build of Musketmans.

 

[lymond]

Do not install BUFFY in Custom Assets. Delete the entire custom assets folder. Install in the Mod folder in your main BTS folder. (not in My games but the same folder as the exe you will see the mod folder)

 

[pmarc]

@paulojose

Just want to concur that it's an excellent first game, and a lot of the feedback is based on particularities of Civ4 that are not present in the later titles. You will find out a lot about them just by reading @Fippy's Beginner Help guide as well.

So the idea is to cut down the trees? The thing is, tree tiles give hammers, so cutting them down will remove that. In Civilization 5 I usually left the forests standing to later build Lumber Mills on the tile, but here it seems it's better to cut down the trees... And what to do with this tile later?

One thing that stands out in Civ4 vs. Civ6 is that special resource tiles are very powerful (e.g. a corn farm on a river is 6 food vs. just 3 for a normal grass farm, copper mine is 1f5h or 2f4h vs. 1/3 or 0/4 for a normal mine). So the focus is on improving special resources early, and then cottages for the economy. Some resource tiles can be improved while leaving the forest (like deer) in which case you don't chop it.

Lumber mills are available late and not more powerful than mine, in fact late game mines supplant lumber mills again because of the railroad bonus. Also raw hammers on tiles are weaker in this game because of how powerful the slavery civic is, it lets you convert food to hammers at an advantageous rate especially with the granary building because granary halves the food requirement to regrow. The main reason you would want lots of hammers early is to build a wonder because slavery gets a penalty when used for wonders.

I've read people saying that Cuirassier are a strong unit, problem is that I'll need to research Meditation, Polytheism, Aesthetics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Nationalism and finally Military Tradition, so it will take a lot of turns so here I think I'll just rush some Musketeers and try to win with that.

The Cuirassier rush also uses a few mechanics that are particular to Civ4. Great people especially great scientists (that you get by assigning specialists in a city with a library or anywhere if caste system civic is on) can accelerate (lightbulb or "bulb") research of specific technologies, so a great scientist can research Philosophy instantly, 2 of them can research Education. There's a huge synergy with Philosophy because it also unlocks the Pacifism civic allowing more great people generation. Music gives you a free Great Artist if you're first to it, leading to a Golden Age for more great people generation. Finally, if you're first to Liberalism you can pick up a free tech (usually Military Tradition for the classic Cuir rush). So that's why this particular strategy is popular, but there are many ways to win!

I didn't think of settling on the coast because of the snow, snow gives nothing. What 2f3C you are referring to? On the coast there are some 1f3C.

Lighthouse adds +1F to coastal tiles. It's really good especially with Financial leaders.

I didn't know that the further away from the capital the worse the maintenance, I don't remember having that in Civilization 5. Or does it happen on civ 5 as well and I didn't know?

Yes, there are two parts to maintenance, one proportional to distance and one proportional to the number of cities. The latter means that every time you add a city, maintenance goes up in all your cities a little bit. That way total maintenance increases faster than linearly with # of cities, so it forces you do develop your cities before expanding further.

In fact I didn't attack the barbarians' cities, I used the warriors to get to know the land and attack the barbarians but not their cities.

I thought I saw a message that you took Bactrian after Construction, maybe that was a misread.

Indeed It would have been better to have placed the city one more tile to the right, and what is FIN cottage?

Financial leader trait makes it so a 2C cottage becomes 3C instead, so cottages give more commerce faster.

Also, I'd like some help with this "Unit Stacking" thing. It's really weird having 16 units on the same tile, it's really confusing. Also, the archers and catapults not being able to attack from range is also really weird.

Yeah, you have to think of it as a different scale. The ranged attack for archers is modelled as "first strikes" in the game; those units get "free" attacks with no counter before then trading blows with the other unit. The way combat happens in this game for the most part is that in a single "battle", units trade attacks until one dies, and there is some randomness in the damage. You can see that in the detailed combat log. There are exceptions like many cavalry units can retreat at low health when defeated, only when they are the attacker, and siege units do collateral damage to other units in the stack besides the main defender, only when they attack. (Siege also damages city defenses but not units when you use the bombard command instead of attack.) For the sake of calculating bonuses, combat always happen on the defending unit tile and the "best" defender on the tile is always picked against each attacker.

Another huge difference in this game as you probably noticed is that cities are defenseless without units in them. Undefended cities are taken by any military unit just walking in. The % you see for the city defense is applied to boost the strength of the defending units (but not units like cavalry that don't get defensive bonuses). It is the largest of (1) the culture level of the city that gives 20% per culture level and (2) walls (50%) or castle (100%) in the city, although those are useless against gunpowder.

 

[paulojose]

Do not install BUFFY in Custom Assets. Delete the entire custom assets folder. Install in the Mod folder in your main BTS folder. (not in My games but the same folder as the exe you will see the mod folder)

Ok, did this.
It's working on new games, but when I try to load my save it gives this warning and then loads the save without the mod.

@paulojose

Just want to concur that it's an excellent first game, and a lot of the feedback is based on particularities of Civ4 that are not present in the later titles. You will find out a lot about them just by reading @Fippy's Beginner Help guide as well.


One thing that stands out in Civ4 vs. Civ6 is that special resource tiles are very powerful (e.g. a corn farm on a river is 6 food vs. just 3 for a normal grass farm, copper mine is 1f5h or 2f4h vs. 1/3 or 0/4 for a normal mine). So the focus is on improving special resources early, and then cottages for the economy. Some resource tiles can be improved while leaving the forest (like deer) in which case you don't chop it.

Lumber mills are available late and not more powerful than mine, in fact late game mines supplant lumber mills again because of the railroad bonus. Also raw hammers on tiles are weaker in this game because of how powerful the slavery civic is, it lets you convert food to hammers at an advantageous rate especially with the granary building because granary halves the food requirement to regrow. The main reason you would want lots of hammers early is to build a wonder because slavery gets a penalty when used for wonders.



The Cuirassier rush also uses a few mechanics that are particular to Civ4. Great people especially great scientists (that you get by assigning specialists in a city with a library or anywhere if caste system civic is on) can accelerate (lightbulb or "bulb") research of specific technologies, so a great scientist can research Philosophy instantly, 2 of them can research Education. There's a huge synergy with Philosophy because it also unlocks the Pacifism civic allowing more great people generation. Music gives you a free Great Artist if you're first to it, leading to a Golden Age for more great people generation. Finally, if you're first to Liberalism you can pick up a free tech (usually Military Tradition for the classic Cuir rush). So that's why this particular strategy is popular, but there are many ways to win!



Lighthouse adds +1F to coastal tiles. It's really good especially with Financial leaders.



Yes, there are two parts to maintenance, one proportional to distance and one proportional to the number of cities. The latter means that every time you add a city, maintenance goes up in all your cities a little bit. That way total maintenance increases faster than linearly with # of cities, so it forces you do develop your cities before expanding further.




I thought I saw a message that you took Bactrian after Construction, maybe that was a misread.


Financial leader trait makes it so a 2C cottage becomes 3C instead, so cottages give more commerce faster.




Yeah, you have to think of it as a different scale. The ranged attack for archers is modelled as "first strikes" in the game; those units get "free" attacks with no counter before then trading blows with the other unit. The way combat happens in this game for the most part is that in a single "battle", units trade attacks until one dies, and there is some randomness in the damage. You can see that in the detailed combat log. There are exceptions like many cavalry units can retreat at low health when defeated, only when they are the attacker, and siege units do collateral damage to other units in the stack besides the main defender, only when they attack. (Siege also damages city defenses but not units when you use the bombard command instead of attack.) For the sake of calculating bonuses, combat always happen on the defending unit tile and the "best" defender on the tile is always picked against each attacker.

Another huge difference in this game as you probably noticed is that cities are defenseless without units in them. Undefended cities are taken by any military unit just walking in. The % you see for the city defense is applied to boost the strength of the defending units (but not units like cavalry that don't get defensive bonuses). It is the largest of (1) the culture level of the city that gives 20% per culture level and (2) walls (50%) or castle (100%) in the city, although those are useless against gunpowder.

Thank you for the info!

About the combat, it seems the combat is indeed a bit more complicated than on civ 5, I'll go search for more details on it.

 

[floydmcw]

late game mines supplant lumber mills again because of the railroad bonus

Lumbermills also get the +1 hammer railroad bonus.

(This is just quibbling, I am not saying one should prefer lumbermills.)

 

[a pen-dragon]

It's working on new games, but when I try to load my save it gives this warning and then loads the save without the mod.

This is by design. A save contains information on which mod it was played in and will always try to load with that mod. The mod line can not trivially be changed, but if you want there is a tool to edit saves. BUFFY does not change anything that changes the game's behaviour, thus this should not create problems.

edit: added an important not.

 

[lymond]

Yep, BUFFY is a standalone mod. It will only load saves created by BUFFY. If you want to run existing games with BUG/BULL features, then install BUG and BULL in custom assets. (BUFFY is built off of BUG and BULL, but they can be installed in Custom Assets and will load of any non modded save