need help defeating an easy opponent

[fimf]

i just started playing civ1 and i like it a lot, but i find it quiet difficult to beat the opponent even at easy level. is there anyone who has some useful tips?

 

[Agent327]

Build offensive units and take out nearby civs ASAP. Once you have a sound economy and strong empire, consider switching govs (Despotism being very good for early expansion, but not for large empires). Use central cities for economy/research and border cities for military expansion. (Or, alternatively, use certain large cities to keep up your miltary production, and others for economy/research.)

Another key aspect is: never stop building Settlers until your world is well und truly civilized.

 

[Dandenoth]

Best hints I can think of, keeping in mind that you're playing at chieftan level:

#1: First turn in the game, change your tax rate to 100% science, 0 tax, 0 luxuries. Later in the game, when you have improvements sucking down your treasury, you'll be able to raise your taxes without hurting your science output much, but early game, this is critical.
#2: In order of most important first technologies, I go Bronze Working (Phalanx unit), Pottery (Granary improvement), The Wheel (Chariot unit), and Monarchy (for the government).
#3: Switch to Monarchy as soon as you get it. The tile production bonuses help immensely.
#4: Build granarys in your first few cities to increase their population, and thusly their outputs.
#5: Improve those tiles! If you're luck enough to get a two settler start, do not build another city with the second, use him as your permanent improvement worker, since he's maintenance free.

Following these will always get you ahead early in easy games, and should help you gain a stranglehold on the competition. Just remember, don't ever agree to technology swaps with the AI, because you can usually get it easily enough yourself, or by capturing their cities.

If you find the AI to aggressive, I suggest playing as the Greeks. The English and Greek civs are both built inherently as being quite aggressive, and can be challenging, so playing as the Greeks takes them both out of your hair. You could play as the English as well, I suppose, but that's just personal preference.

I can go more in depth, with things like city placement, research paths, and so on, but this should be more than enough to turn the tides.

 

[Tristan_C]

#1: First turn in the game, change your tax rate to 100% science, 0 tax, 0 luxuries. Later in the game, when you have improvements sucking down your treasury, you'll be able to raise your taxes without hurting your science output much, but early game, this is critical.
#2: In order of most important first technologies, I go Bronze Working (Phalanx unit), Pottery (Granary improvement), The Wheel (Chariot unit), and Monarchy (for the government).
#3: Switch to Monarchy as soon as you get it. The tile production bonuses help immensely.
#4: Build granarys in your first few cities to increase their population, and thusly their outputs.
#5: Improve those tiles! If you're luck enough to get a two settler start, do not build another city with the second, use him as your permanent improvement worker, since he's maintenance free.

These work well at chieftain, yes, but I feel like developing aggressive techniques as early as you can is good practice.

#1 & 2: 100% Taxes at the beginning is viable. You may want to try only maxing science at the beginning to reach target strategic techs as they are needed. When you reach the tech, the fastest way to make it work for you is to max taxes and buy stuff. Like starting off the bat,

1. 100% science -> Wheel (chariots are an awesome blitz unit with a laughable tech cost)
2. 100% taxes -> buy chariots & settlers and act super-aggressive
3. 100% science -> next target techs... often Map, Bronze, Rep, and Dem, Pots, or Currency

#3: Be careful. Most people skip this government. In higher difficulties, unrest caps your city pops too low for the Monarchy food from irrigated tiles to be of any real use. Meanwhile, monarchy drains shields for unit maintenance at all times, regardless of whether you are working improved tiles. Because of this, switching to monarchy has the capacity to severely injure your civilization, particularly if you make the switch "as soon as you get it" without considering the cost of the extra food.

This is not to say that monarchy is *bad* for chieftain, but that remaining in Despotism is far superior unless you manage to go mad with irrigation.

#4. No complaints here. Build granaries, they are solid. When you get the hang of the game, though, try beelining democracy or republic instead and use luxuries to grow your cities fast.

#5. A second settler is usually indicative that the game placed rivals close at hand and you will need to fight early on. By all means use it to throw down some roads (+trade) and irrigation (+food).