Dear civ newbies,
"Civilization 4, the best rated strategy game ever! I must try it!". This is how I started out with Civ 4. However, once I started my first game of Civ I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Build city - OK, build buildings - OK, build units - OK, but where am I headed? This is supposed to involve strategy folks and how can that be if I don't know what to aim for? I asked here on the forums about how I could learn Civ 4. The most common reply was 'play and you'll learn'. They were right of course but getting into the civ took some time. The aim of this introduction is to get you into civ quick.
First of all the concept of 'game' can be misleading. As in when you play other games you know what your objective is. With Civ you merely know that you must make a civilization that outstrips your rivals and the path to that is left open to the player.
As most experienced civ players would agree, the path is the charm of the game. The course that you chart for yourself and the decisions you take make the game interesting.
Think of civ as life. It is the same world around us but we all function differently in it. Humans have been around on the earth for many millennia and yet there is no common objective to life. We come to know about things in the world and how they work. We decide as to what we do with them, how we do and most importantly, why we do them. We all seem to make our own sense of life.
Similarly in Civ, you have a set of things - different tiles, units, buildings and wonders, improvements, resources, civics - and you are given the rules that govern them. How you mix the ingredients is up to you. It is like mathematics, wherein you know the formulas and concepts and you mix them up to solve different kind of problems.
With that said, I would suggest that you start up the game and try to figure out the ground rules. Forget about the strategy for now and just try to familiarize yourself with the different elements of the game. Try to figure out how things work. For example, "I see that whenever the population grows a new white circle appears on the city screen! Okay. The circles show what tiles are being worked (as in what tiles are food, hammer and commerce being extracted from). Alright!" Don't be afraid to fiddle around.
It takes patience but the investment is worth it.
"Civilization 4, the best rated strategy game ever! I must try it!". This is how I started out with Civ 4. However, once I started my first game of Civ I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Build city - OK, build buildings - OK, build units - OK, but where am I headed? This is supposed to involve strategy folks and how can that be if I don't know what to aim for? I asked here on the forums about how I could learn Civ 4. The most common reply was 'play and you'll learn'. They were right of course but getting into the civ took some time. The aim of this introduction is to get you into civ quick.
First of all the concept of 'game' can be misleading. As in when you play other games you know what your objective is. With Civ you merely know that you must make a civilization that outstrips your rivals and the path to that is left open to the player.
As most experienced civ players would agree, the path is the charm of the game. The course that you chart for yourself and the decisions you take make the game interesting.
Think of civ as life. It is the same world around us but we all function differently in it. Humans have been around on the earth for many millennia and yet there is no common objective to life. We come to know about things in the world and how they work. We decide as to what we do with them, how we do and most importantly, why we do them. We all seem to make our own sense of life.
Similarly in Civ, you have a set of things - different tiles, units, buildings and wonders, improvements, resources, civics - and you are given the rules that govern them. How you mix the ingredients is up to you. It is like mathematics, wherein you know the formulas and concepts and you mix them up to solve different kind of problems.
With that said, I would suggest that you start up the game and try to figure out the ground rules. Forget about the strategy for now and just try to familiarize yourself with the different elements of the game. Try to figure out how things work. For example, "I see that whenever the population grows a new white circle appears on the city screen! Okay. The circles show what tiles are being worked (as in what tiles are food, hammer and commerce being extracted from). Alright!" Don't be afraid to fiddle around.
It takes patience but the investment is worth it.
