New to Civ IV

[Wes007]

Hey everyone,

I have a few questions regarding Civ IV. Me and my wife have started playing it alot and we are in the middle of a huge Hot Seat game. I'm finding I suck! I have a few towns but they are not growing at all. I am at the bottom of the list in 17th place, the only person doing worst is Ghandi.

What can I do to get my town growing? I am on the best food spots I have built a granary and stuff.....any suggestions?

Also, is there anyway I can get a guide on how to get off to a good start in the game?

Thanks!

 

[Snuffleupagus]

it is hard to tell what is going wrong without more info...

first try reading this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=132711

(sorry, not sure if I can hotlink in here, just copy and paste, it is Sulla's walkthrough which is stickied on this forum)

besides that, I might suggest workers? you mention a granary, but workers improving your tiles is absolutely essential. The computer will tell you to build cottages all the time, but sometimes you have to ignore it and build farms and windmills to get that extra food going.

also, check your health? if your cities are too unlhealthy then you will be losing food and that will slow growth.

 

[MattJek]

BradyGames has a pretty decent strategy guide. Its not that usefull for experienced players but I think its an excellent guide for beginners.

 

[Wes007]

Yeah I think health could be a problem.

How can I improve the health of my city? Besides waiting 30 turns to build some building to fix it

 

[jdotmi]

I'd recommend reading the articles in the strategy forums. I've been a very long time lurker on these boards and the people who write the strategies really know their stuff.

Early town growth can be very difficult for a few reasons. You don't start out with a worker, and trying to build a worker stalls your town expansion. You might get lucky and pop a worker out of a goodie hut, but don't count on it. Granaries are only useful if you have good food production.

The way I play it currently is to let my town grow to size 3 or 4 before building a worker. In the meantime, I build with a focus on how I want to win that particular game. In my current game, that meant focusing on Barracks and Military. Once I have my worker built, I'll work on the granary. My worker then gets to work making farms and cottages. One or two farmed grasslands or food bonus tiles should be enough to grow your city for it's entirety. If you have floodplains, farm them and have at it.

At this point, I am all about using forest chop to beef up production of settlers. Once I have three to five cities I'm usually content to focus on my win conditions again.

 

[Stumpyguy]

Could be one of a few problems, although its hard to know without more information.
What difficulty are you playing on?
Are the cities happy?
What improvements have you built with the workers?

Farms on useable land will increase food, as will windmills on hills although depending on your goals you may see the production as more important then possible commerce from cottages and stick to building farms, which will require workers.

Another likely cause could be the unhappy people in the cities, who eat but wont work tiles. SO temples and the such maybe necessary.

Another possibility is that your city manager is trying to emphasise something else like production or commerce, and this can be seen in the little icons on the bottom right of the city screen. Maybe check that youre using the tiles which have the most food. If youve got specialists in the cities then it may be worthwhile to make them wrk tiles instead.

Hope this could be of help and sorry if it isnt, and sorry if i'm talking basics but I'm not sure how familiar with the game you are.

There are a few forums in the strategy section here about how to start, i think there was one about the "worker chop" strategy, and others about a quick rush with military units if you just have a little look round as i dont know where they are.

Theres also a walkthrough by Sulla in the general section which is really good and explains a lot.

 

[Stumpyguy]

unhealthyness is solved by resources such as corn, wheat etc (little red cross in a white circle will show that it gives health), aquaducts give +3 health and a few others. Maybe try and trade in some of the health giving resources from another civilization?