I'm not good...

dragonnewby

Chieftain
Joined
May 25, 2008
Messages
18
Right now, I play only settler (i just started) and i'm not very good at it. I mean i do win, but only by diplomatic or space victory
Might this be the problems:
-I always have 100% on science thingy
-By the end of the game, i only have 5 or 6 cities
-I build very few military
-I build too many wonders
-I become friends with anyone who i find
Also i have some questions:
How many cities should i build before medieval age?
How low can my science bar be?
How do i make colonies?
How do i get extra random events?
How do i chop trees without getting my cities sick?

More coming soon.
Note: i have civ4 and all the expansion packs. Bought them all at once.
 
Nothing wrong with starting on settler, or going for diplomatic/space victory. Just keep playing, you'll figure it out.
 
-I always have 100% on science thingy
:confused:

-By the end of the game, i only have 5 or 6 cities
Bad. Either settle more early (REXing, rapid early expansion) or conquer some.

-I build very few military
Well when you know that, just build more next game ;)

-I build too many wonders
Then don't build them. It's as easy as that

-I become friends with anyone who i find
What's wrong with that?

How many cities should i build before medieval age?
Depends on map script, map size, # of AI. Standard game, standard map probabely 6-9

How low can my science bar be?
Depends. If you generate your science via commerce (cottages, mills, trade routs, ...) it should be as high as possible (d'oh)
If you generate your science via specialists, it can easily be 0% in the early game, after the initial expansion phase.

How do i make colonies?
Alt-F1 I think
or
F1 -> fist icon

How do i get extra random events?
With some patience. Every turn there is a chance of getting one. Not having them disabled helps here of course :p I believe they're only in BtS

How do i chop trees without getting my cities sick?
Check F1 or the city screen to see whether the city is about to become unhealthy. Usually its not so bad if the city is unhealthy, just make sure it doesn't become unhappy. Every two forests count as +1 health. If there's a forest in two cities BFC (so-called overlap) they count for both cities, so don't chop those.
 
How many cities should i build before medieval age?
This is hard to say. If I go to space, I try to have about 12 cities (standard map). I get many of them with war. At Settler you don't have to worry about costs of your cities, they will be low.

How low can my science bar be?
It can be as low as 0%, if you know a little more about the game. Because you are beginning try to keep it around 60%, put something into espionage if you are playing BTS. Remember 100% of 80 is less than 60% of 400....

How do i make colonies?
How do i get extra random events?
I can't answer this because I don't have BTS. :(

How do i chop trees without getting my cities sick?
You need to get more health resources (corn, wheat, rice, fish, etc...). More cities means more resources. There are buildings that help: granary, aqueduct, grocer and harbor - early in the game; hospital, supermarket and recycling center later. Granary, grocer, harbor and supermarket help only if you have the right resources.
 
Turn on resource bubbles(it is a ? with ayellow circle around i belive). Then try to claim as many different of them as possible. Every one allows your cities to grow one size further without getting red faces and/or green faces. You really don't need to worry about colonies at this stage(I don't belive they should be used in even very special cases under monarch, and even at monarch+ you use them almost never).

Once you manage to beat settler(shouldn't be hard if you pay attention to resource bubbles, just try to get as many different as possible), try to get one food resource or 8+ grassland(or similar) in every city. Don't settle cities that don't have either of these. I don't think you actually need much in the way of military below noble so i wouldn't worry too much about that yet. However there is no reason to build a ton of wonders, just build more settlers and workers to get more cities. If there is space for more good cities(at least one food resource or alot of grassland), build it. Don't work much titles without improvements(cottage or farm or mine the titles(with specific improvements on resource titles), later you can learn how different title improvements work). If a city have more yellow faces than red and more health than green faces it means it needs to grow more(most likely anyways), you can check such things in the city screens(double click on the cities).

I hope some of this helps. Personaly i started at noble so i have no idea what the lower levels are like but i belive this should be enough to carry you through them... Maybe read some of the walkthroughs of games posted here on the forum(with feedback) that way you'll get an idea of what to do in specific situations.
 
How do i make colonies?
The domestic advisor (one of the buttons at the top- the one that looks like a house). When you click on it there is a little fist like when you are in anarchy. Click on it and choose what you want to do. You can liberatle cities to the AI or sometimes you can make colonies.

Early in the game my science slider often goes as low as 10% becauseof all the rexing I do and all the cities I conquer. Once you research currency and code of laws it can go back up to like 80%.
Remember 100% of 80 is less than 60% of 400....
 
One thing helped me in the beginning. I used to forget to hook many resources, so one or two workers building trade network help a lot (click on the worker and select it). You should check in the options (press ESC) Automate Workers Leave Forests and Automate Workers Leave Old Improvements.
 
Space race and wonder-building are fun, I must admit. But to refine your game to play at higher levels, there are a few things you will need to learn. One if figuring out how fast you can expand before your economy crashes, then figure out the solution (courthouses, currency, harbors, or pillaging enemies come to mind). Second is, don't get too fond of your nearest neighbor--you are likely going to need to take him or her out of the game in order to have room to expand.

Best of luck and welcome!
 
Right now, I play only settler (i just started) and i'm not very good at it. I mean i do win, but only by diplomatic or space victory
Play a game at the noble difficulty level. Expect to get beaten, but also pay attention to just how much is possible!

If you're winning all the time at settler, it's probably worth moving up in difficulty anyways. :)

There's nothing wrong with diplomatic victory or space victory -- but if you want to try winning other victories:
. For a cultural victory, you really have to spend a lot of effort getting lots of culture in your three cities. Spend some time looking at all of the different ways of generating culture -- try to formulate a plan that emphases them!
. For a conquest or domination victory, you're going to have to build military. Lots of it. And, of course, you can't be friends with the person you're attacking. :)


-I always have 100% on science thingy
If you can afford that, you probably have not built enough cities! Also, that percentage is not a good indicator of how well you're doing -- you need to look at (e.g.) your financial advisor to see how much research you're generating.


How many cities should i build before medieval age?
By the medieval era, almost the entire world should be settled -- if you have a lot of unsettled land around your territory, you're going too slow. (On higher levels, the computer does a good job of occupying its territory. I don't know how bad it is at settler level)

How low can my science bar be?
In my highest scoring game, there was a point where my science bar was at 0% and I was still losing 14 gold per turn. :)

How do i chop trees without getting my cities sick?
. Find ways to generate extra healthiness -- look at all of the game mechanics available to you (e.g. buildings, resources, civics)
. Avoid generating extra unhealthiness; the biggest source of unhealthiness is large cities. While big cities are good, you usually want to keep them from growing larger than you can handle.



Basically, now that you've played a few games, it is probably worth spending some time looking at the options you have available -- e.g. open up the science advisor and explore all of the early game technologies, and look at what features, buildings, and units they unlock. Find specific things you would like to have, and try spending some time focusing on them. For example, look at the pottery tech, see what building it allows you to build, look at what effects that building gives, and think about how to maximize the effect of that building.
 
What leader do you generally use.. Perhaps if you use an industriious leader, you are more likely to wonder spam.
To change your game, take an aggressive leader and switch on Raging barbs and Aggressive AI, that will make you look at war differently.
 
A good way to get better is ignore specific aspects of the game; that way you learn not to rely ont he same crutch all the time.

Examples would be...

No wonders (teaches one the opporunity costs... e.g. settlers to double your civ size)
No cottages (teaches one the flexibility of food and the power of specialists)
No mines/workshops (teaches one to appreciate the power of Slavery.)
No religions (watch for more religious wars between AIs)


Your minimum number of cities should be so that you can build national wonders... 6 at standard settings if I recall correctly. By medieval time, you will probably have to take new land by force.

Your science bar can get very low indeed. On the higher levels, I sometimes end up breaking even at 100% gold, but there isn't really any need to go that far below Emperor. A hard-and-fast rule is that being able to support between 50% and 70% science is good. Any higher and you are probably expanding too slowly. Any lower without a good reason and you might be neglecting your economy (are you connecting new cities to the trade network? Are you catching up with your workers so you are working mostly improved tiles? Are you building the right economic infrastructure?).

Most ways into health lie in resources. Conquer those you lack, trade for them if you can. Also trade away spares unless you have a corporation that uses it.
 
I have few more questions:
Which wonders are the most important?
How do i balance building like granary building and military building?
How much should my cultural bar be if i want to achieve cultural victory?
Why do some corporations actually take money away from my cities?
How do i break alliances between AI if they are really friendly to each other?
Where do i build workshops to try to leave food the way it is?
How do I prevent slave revolts?
What's state and non-state religion?

Thanks for the answers before this and for this too!
 
1) It depends on your strategy. For an SE, pyramids are a great boost but they don't do much for a CE
2) Only build military buildings in production cities. Every city gets a granary and other buildings that promote growth
3) Because they cost a ton of maitnence. They aren't designed to give money, they're designed to give resources, food, hammers, or culture at the cost of money.
4) As soon as you research the last tech you want, 100%
5) Kill one of them
6) I don't understand
7) Don't run slavery. Other than that you're stuck with them
8) State religion is the religion you choose to have all the benefits of the religious civics as well as diplomatic modifiers. Non-State religion is simply any religion that isn't your state religion.
 
I have few more questions:
Which wonders are the most important?
It's depends on your strategy, but I like the Pyramids (early Representation) and Great Library (lots of Great Scientists).

How do i balance building like granary building and military building?
The granary is one of my priority building, I try to build it as soon as possible.

How much should my cultural bar be if i want to achieve cultural victory?
0% before liberarism/print press/nationalism
100% after that
I use cottage driven cultural victories. On lower levels I build lot of wonders too. Last year for a month or two, I played a lot of cultural games on lower levels (settler and chieftain), here is the write up:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218344
How do i break alliances between AI if they are really friendly to each other?
You may try to convert one AI to a different religion, if both shares the same religion.


What's state and non-state religion?
You can select a state religion and all cities you have that has this religion will receive one happy face. It affects the diplomacy as well. If you and an AI shares the same religion, it will like you more. If you and an AI have different state religions, it will like you less. Some AI are religion fanatics, Saladin and Isabel will hate you if you don't adopt theirs religion.
You might run non-state religion as well. In the beginning of the game, this means you get no happiness from religion. If you can run free religion, you get happiness for all religions. Running non-state religion will bring you no plus or minus point in diplomacy.
 
A hard-and-fast rule is that being able to support between 50% and 70% science is good.
While this is sound advice for an "average" game (whatever that may be), it might be easier to ignore the slider percentage and look at how many beakers per turn your empire is generating. This gives a much better impression of how well your research is going.

The reason for this is that by setting the science slider you only adjust how much of your total commerce is converted into beakers. However, apart from commerce there are other sources for beakers, mainly specialists.

The more (beaker producing) specialists you run, the less important the slider becomes for your beaker output per turn -- which, at the end of the day (or round ;-) is all that matters.

0% science can be just fine. Do not get into the mindset of "having to run an x% slider" because it will lead to bad decisions in your games.

Getting your own rules of thumb for how many beakers per turn are "good" is easy by watching that number and observing how well you do in the tech race. I won't give any example numbers here because they make no sense outside the context of a given game speed and difficulty level.

Having said that, the slider is still a valuable indicator for how healthy your economy is, because it shows you how much surplus commerce you can afford to put into science, culture or espionage. The rest of your commerce is converted into gold, which in turn gets eaten up by city maintenance, civic/unit upkeep and other means (paying for bad random events, upgrades etc.).

If you find that you have to run a 0% slider (which means a 100% gold slider), then your empire maintenance is completely eating up the commerce you generate, leaving no room for additional units, more expensive civics and further expansion. THAT is bad, not the fact that you are running 0% science, because as illustrated above, your beakers per turn might still be high in such a situation.

Finally, trying to compress the above into punchlines:
  • The beakers per turn are the only thing that matters to your tech rate.
  • The gold slider is the only thing that matters to your expansion head room.
  • The two can be closely related ("cottage economy") or loosely related ("specialist economy"), but are to be treated separately.
 
I have few more questions:
Which wonders are the most important?
It would be easier to answer if you had asked "what wonders are the least important?". I can give you some examples there: The Shwegadon Paya, The Hagia Sophia, The Sistine Chapel, Chichen Itza and others.
Now, this is to be taken with a grain of salt because any of these wonders might be very beneficial to your game, it is just much less likely the case than if we were talking about The Oracle, for example.

The Sistine Chapel is almost useless unless you are going for a cultural victory or your borders are under severe cultural pressure and you are running many specialists all over the place anyway.

The Oracle is NEVER useless because it gives you a (possibly very expensive) tech for free.

The Great Lighthouse can range from close to worthless (if you have almost no coastal cities) to super-powerful (if you are on an Islands map).

I could go on like that but if you follow sample games in these forums and look at your own games you will find out by yourself which wonders are good, and which are not so good. Sometimes it's not obvious to a beginning player if a wonder is really good because its value might depend on a certain strategy (or map type). This is why I recommend to read sample games and see what the experienced player do with wonders, and why.

How do i balance building like granary building and military building?
Granaries are good because they greatly increase the rate at which your cities grow, and growth/food is probably the most important factor to your overall success. There are not many reasons a city should be without a granary for a long time, and thusly they should be among the first buildings you construct in a new city.

Barracks increase your power rating just by building them, so its never bad to have many of them because a high power rating intimidates the AI and makes them less likely to attack or threaten you. Apart from that it's good to have them in your production cities for the obvious reason that you will build your units there ;-). The further specialized military buildings should only go into cities where you plan to build many units, usually your best production cities.

There is absolutely no rule to how to "balance" buildings because it entirely depends on your overall strategy to the game at hand.

How much should my cultural bar be if i want to achieve cultural victory?
Again, this can't be answered in a straight fashion, but usually you want to have it at 100% at some point of the game to generate as much culture as possible per turn. When to set it to 100% depends on when you have researched all the technologies you need for self-defense and cultural buildings.

Why do some corporations actually take money away from my cities?
Because they would be too powerful if they were free. In fact, ALL CORPORATIONS take away (a lot) of money from your cities, but if you own the headquarters ("holy city") of a corporation you can get back some of that money, or even run a profit.

How do i break alliances between AI if they are really friendly to each other?
The best way to do this is to bribe one of the two into a different religion, which means you have to spread it first. That can be costly and time-consuming. If they are both peace-loving and sharing a state religion it is practically the only way though.
Sometimes there is no practical way to break close AI alliances so you just have to put up with it.

How do I prevent slave revolts?
By not running the Slavery civic at all. There's no other way to avoid them.

What's state and non-state religion?
Your state religion is the one you converted to in the religious advisor screen (and indicated by the symbol on the score board). You can have no state religion at all, too.
 
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