Hey I have just recently gotten back into civ 4 after a long time, ive been playing on noble as the Koreans, and have realized that while I have an ok early game strategy after I get through a religion tech (Hinduism mostly) bronze working maybe iron working if I cant find copper and need a mil, and pottery, my second city and find the basic resources (copper horses maybe iron etc) I find that i get a little lost, mostly I get lost as to how much of a military I should build on a map, assuming i have some space to expand initially not right next to the borders of an enemy at the start, and how many defenders I should have in each city (given that I start with protective on all archers) generally research wise I jump right to a combination of construction/monarchy (if I feel threatened) or code of laws and civil service if I want to boom, basically my problem is that unless I feel the need for an army/am under attack I tend to have no idea how much of an army I should just have lying around while im teching and in the end I get crushed because I boom too much and dont build enough of a standing army to stop me from dying mid game
mid game strategy
- Thread starter slam7211
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Welcome to the forum! 
Generally, it's better to avoid the early religious techs. The big priority in the opening is growing your economy as fast as possible; getting faster pastures or faster gold mines will have a much bigger impact on your game 90% of the time than founding a religion will. You certainly want at least one strategic resource (copper, iron, or horses), but any one of those will work fine.
Iron Working is expensive (and usually fairly easy to trade for from the AI), so most people avoid it unless they are in the jungle, or are planning on rushing swords or rushing crossbows. Chariots will do fine for barbarian defense; horse archers are a strong offensive option until longbows start becoming too numerous.
You definitely want one military unit in each city. If you feel particularly nervous about a city, you might give it a 2- or 3- archer/longbow garrison, but that should be the exception and not the rule. If you're in the Hereditary Rule civic, you'll want to garrison more units in cities to raise happy cap; at least 2-3 units in your major cities, and it's fine to go up to 5 or more units (you want to garrison units to raise the happy cap enough to work all the good tiles if you can, or enough to make use of surplus food by growing steadily if you have a ton of good tiles). Beyond that, you want to have just one big stack; how you split it up in peacetime depends on where you think threats will come from (your first move if someone attacks you is to gather that stack all in one place to meet their army and crush it). How much of a stack you need varies wildly based on your neighbors and diplomatic situation.
The AIs all have their own personalities - there are unit spammers, religious zealots, psychopaths, backstabbers, pacifists, wonder spammers, isolationists, and more. Depending on which AIs you're bordering, how the religions are breaking down, and what wars have already happened / are currently happening, you often don't need any defensive army. Sometimes it's prudent to keep a few archers in border cities as a garrison, and sometimes you want to start planning for a nearly-inevitable war (in which case you're getting a respectable army, with the intention of using it offensively if the expected AI attack doesn't come before the army is ready).
If you are regularly getting killed by an AI attacking you, the most likely problems are poor diplomacy and/or poor management of your empire, not a lack of military. Most games, proper diplomacy can keep you from ever being attacked. When it doesn't, most of the time you can whip + chop + otherwise rush out an army really quickly from all your cities which is strong enough to at least hold off the AI, if not outright defeat their army and take the offensive.
Generally, it's better to avoid the early religious techs. The big priority in the opening is growing your economy as fast as possible; getting faster pastures or faster gold mines will have a much bigger impact on your game 90% of the time than founding a religion will. You certainly want at least one strategic resource (copper, iron, or horses), but any one of those will work fine.
Iron Working is expensive (and usually fairly easy to trade for from the AI), so most people avoid it unless they are in the jungle, or are planning on rushing swords or rushing crossbows. Chariots will do fine for barbarian defense; horse archers are a strong offensive option until longbows start becoming too numerous.
You definitely want one military unit in each city. If you feel particularly nervous about a city, you might give it a 2- or 3- archer/longbow garrison, but that should be the exception and not the rule. If you're in the Hereditary Rule civic, you'll want to garrison more units in cities to raise happy cap; at least 2-3 units in your major cities, and it's fine to go up to 5 or more units (you want to garrison units to raise the happy cap enough to work all the good tiles if you can, or enough to make use of surplus food by growing steadily if you have a ton of good tiles). Beyond that, you want to have just one big stack; how you split it up in peacetime depends on where you think threats will come from (your first move if someone attacks you is to gather that stack all in one place to meet their army and crush it). How much of a stack you need varies wildly based on your neighbors and diplomatic situation.
The AIs all have their own personalities - there are unit spammers, religious zealots, psychopaths, backstabbers, pacifists, wonder spammers, isolationists, and more. Depending on which AIs you're bordering, how the religions are breaking down, and what wars have already happened / are currently happening, you often don't need any defensive army. Sometimes it's prudent to keep a few archers in border cities as a garrison, and sometimes you want to start planning for a nearly-inevitable war (in which case you're getting a respectable army, with the intention of using it offensively if the expected AI attack doesn't come before the army is ready).
If you are regularly getting killed by an AI attacking you, the most likely problems are poor diplomacy and/or poor management of your empire, not a lack of military. Most games, proper diplomacy can keep you from ever being attacked. When it doesn't, most of the time you can whip + chop + otherwise rush out an army really quickly from all your cities which is strong enough to at least hold off the AI, if not outright defeat their army and take the offensive.
you will learn how to distinguish when an AI is going to attack you, with experience 
in most games you don't need to build an army at all, with correct diplomacy that is.
don't rush with religion choice, watch your borders closely.
it may be funny, but I usually get DoW'ed not by Shakas or Tokugawas type, but religious zealot like Saladin or strange personality Sitting Bull/Wang Kong.
warmongers are easy to satisfy usually. if they get a foe to fight against then it is for a long time.
in most games you don't need to build an army at all, with correct diplomacy that is.
don't rush with religion choice, watch your borders closely.
it may be funny, but I usually get DoW'ed not by Shakas or Tokugawas type, but religious zealot like Saladin or strange personality Sitting Bull/Wang Kong.
warmongers are easy to satisfy usually. if they get a foe to fight against then it is for a long time.
VoiceOfUnreason
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Until you have more experience, and can learn to finesse it a bit, my suggestion is to have a bigger army than anybody else.
As an approximation of this, take a look at the demographics screen - the key is to look at your power rank (the numbers aren't too important right now). If your army is not ranked #1, postpone construction of the buildings you want and train units.
Ok so most of you have said religion early game is bad because econ techs are better, in most cases I would agree, the difference here is when im playing as the koreans (starticng tech of mysticism AND mining) so I can get hinduism for and bronzeworking for almost the same turn count as mining/BW tech +3 turns maybe, which seems like a good idea to me (im probs wrong here can someone explain why?)
Before building an army you need to ask yourself 'Why do I want an army?'.
If you intent to win by conquest or domination you need an army.
If you want to rush a neighbour you need an army.
If you have aggressive neighbours and have poor diplomacy with them you need an army.
If you are pursuing a peaceful victory you can often get away without an army. I am a peacemonger at heart and often go for culture, space or diplomacy wins. Armies cost a lot and use many hammers and offer no benefit to the peacemonger if your diplomatic situation is sound.
In my last few games at Emperor with the Khmer and the Greeks (Pericles) I have built one unit per city as a garrison and I'm done building units because I need those hammers for buildings/wealth/research/culture even espionage. This has been possible because I've adopted the dominant religion and enjoy a 'friendly' status with the toughest civs on the map.
It took me ages to improve at diplomacy, it was something I overlooked for a long time. I now approach most games with diplomacy foremost in my mind from the beginning. It doesn't work out every time but recently I've avoided conflict in most games and coasted to a peaceful win because I've befriended the right rivals whilst one or two other nations become the global pariahs.
In my last game I built 7 warriors, 1 per city, and 1 caravel with missionary to convert a would be danger civ to the right religion and took an easy culture win.
I'm not a great player by any means but reading these forums has taught me that diplomacy is king and if you play it right you can control the situation to the point where expensive armies aren't needed.
Diplo basics: Adopt the strong guys religion/give in to their demands/never trade with their enemies. Start with that in mind, keep tweaking it and soon you won't need an army in some games.
If you like waging war, which can be a lot of fun, please disregard this post.
If you intent to win by conquest or domination you need an army.
If you want to rush a neighbour you need an army.
If you have aggressive neighbours and have poor diplomacy with them you need an army.
If you are pursuing a peaceful victory you can often get away without an army. I am a peacemonger at heart and often go for culture, space or diplomacy wins. Armies cost a lot and use many hammers and offer no benefit to the peacemonger if your diplomatic situation is sound.
In my last few games at Emperor with the Khmer and the Greeks (Pericles) I have built one unit per city as a garrison and I'm done building units because I need those hammers for buildings/wealth/research/culture even espionage. This has been possible because I've adopted the dominant religion and enjoy a 'friendly' status with the toughest civs on the map.
It took me ages to improve at diplomacy, it was something I overlooked for a long time. I now approach most games with diplomacy foremost in my mind from the beginning. It doesn't work out every time but recently I've avoided conflict in most games and coasted to a peaceful win because I've befriended the right rivals whilst one or two other nations become the global pariahs.
In my last game I built 7 warriors, 1 per city, and 1 caravel with missionary to convert a would be danger civ to the right religion and took an easy culture win.
I'm not a great player by any means but reading these forums has taught me that diplomacy is king and if you play it right you can control the situation to the point where expensive armies aren't needed.
Diplo basics: Adopt the strong guys religion/give in to their demands/never trade with their enemies. Start with that in mind, keep tweaking it and soon you won't need an army in some games.
If you like waging war, which can be a lot of fun, please disregard this post.
So I'm going to give some general figures which ignore unusual situations and odd opening gambits.
A size-1 city working unimproved terrain generally is net 4-yield. It takes 15 turns to build a 60-hammer worker. A size-1 city working a mine is net 5-yield. A size-1 city working a farmed food resource or pastured animal is usually 6-yield or 7-yield, the strongest you're going to get that early in the game.
Further, food is actually better than production because it also lets your cities grow quickly. In the same time that a city working mines could grow to size-2, a city working improved food resources could probably grow to size-3. At which point you're comparing, say, a 7-yield city (with mines) to a 14-yield city (with food resources). Suddenly your city has become twice as productive because you prioritized getting food resources improved as fast as possible.
This in turn highlights the problem with getting Mysticism, Mining, Polytheism, and Bronze Working, but no food techs. If you're lucky enough to find copper, you can probably keep from falling too far behind, working that copper mine. But otherwise, you're in for a very rough game because you're already going to be a half-dozen turns behind everyone else due to lost early growth and production. And that's not something that wears off - you're going to be struggling to make up that loss for the next four thousand years.
Going for Polytheism -> Bronze Working might make sense if (for example) you start with AGR + Mysticism and have several farm resources in your BFC. Then your worker will have plenty to do farming those resources anyways, so you don't lose much by detouring to Polytheism first.
That said, founding your own religion also isn't as nice as it seems. It means (a) you can't hope for a religious zealot AI to spread a religion to most or all of your cities for you with missionaries, (b) you have to be careful or you'll end up being the only person in that religion, with profound negative consequences for diplomacy, (c) you need to generate and burn a great prophet to get the shrine, which delays your other great people, and (d) there are fewer religions available to AIs on different continents, which decreases the odds of their tech rate getting slowed down by religious feuding.
There are offsetting benefits - shrine income, easy culture and happiness for your cities, and espionage discounts - but you can get any of those with a later religion instead of trying to get one of the first 3. Players who really want a religion often go with an Oracle -> Code of Laws slingshot, which will found Confucianism quite early in the game while also giving you a useful technology.
A size-1 city working unimproved terrain generally is net 4-yield. It takes 15 turns to build a 60-hammer worker. A size-1 city working a mine is net 5-yield. A size-1 city working a farmed food resource or pastured animal is usually 6-yield or 7-yield, the strongest you're going to get that early in the game.
Further, food is actually better than production because it also lets your cities grow quickly. In the same time that a city working mines could grow to size-2, a city working improved food resources could probably grow to size-3. At which point you're comparing, say, a 7-yield city (with mines) to a 14-yield city (with food resources). Suddenly your city has become twice as productive because you prioritized getting food resources improved as fast as possible.
This in turn highlights the problem with getting Mysticism, Mining, Polytheism, and Bronze Working, but no food techs. If you're lucky enough to find copper, you can probably keep from falling too far behind, working that copper mine. But otherwise, you're in for a very rough game because you're already going to be a half-dozen turns behind everyone else due to lost early growth and production. And that's not something that wears off - you're going to be struggling to make up that loss for the next four thousand years.
Going for Polytheism -> Bronze Working might make sense if (for example) you start with AGR + Mysticism and have several farm resources in your BFC. Then your worker will have plenty to do farming those resources anyways, so you don't lose much by detouring to Polytheism first.
That said, founding your own religion also isn't as nice as it seems. It means (a) you can't hope for a religious zealot AI to spread a religion to most or all of your cities for you with missionaries, (b) you have to be careful or you'll end up being the only person in that religion, with profound negative consequences for diplomacy, (c) you need to generate and burn a great prophet to get the shrine, which delays your other great people, and (d) there are fewer religions available to AIs on different continents, which decreases the odds of their tech rate getting slowed down by religious feuding.
There are offsetting benefits - shrine income, easy culture and happiness for your cities, and espionage discounts - but you can get any of those with a later religion instead of trying to get one of the first 3. Players who really want a religion often go with an Oracle -> Code of Laws slingshot, which will found Confucianism quite early in the game while also giving you a useful technology.
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