Newbie friendly strategies and civilizations
- Thread starter player01
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2008
- Messages
- 26,916
My first recommendation is to check out the War Academy under the CIV IV menu at the top. Here's a direct link to intro strat articles:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/introductory_courses
Sisituil's Begginner article is a good start. It's best to read up on these articles first before having folks hit you with tons of different strategies.
Secondly, I recommend running a shadow game with screenshots. You will get a lot of good advice this way. Some may play along too if you post a save.
As for civs, generally any civ with the Financial trait is a good start. Organized is a nice trait too. Elizabeth is quite flexible. Darius is powerful as well with a great early UU. Ultimately though you want to learn to play with all civs and once you get a few basics down you should win with any one of them on lower levels.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/introductory_courses
Sisituil's Begginner article is a good start. It's best to read up on these articles first before having folks hit you with tons of different strategies.
Secondly, I recommend running a shadow game with screenshots. You will get a lot of good advice this way. Some may play along too if you post a save.
As for civs, generally any civ with the Financial trait is a good start. Organized is a nice trait too. Elizabeth is quite flexible. Darius is powerful as well with a great early UU. Ultimately though you want to learn to play with all civs and once you get a few basics down you should win with any one of them on lower levels.
VoiceOfUnreason
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2005
- Messages
- 3,663
Hatshepsut of Egypt
Food is life
Land is Power
Worker first
Plan - it's supposed to be a strategy game, after all
1.5 workers per city
Disposapults
For more, see the links in my sig.
Puhi
Warlord
My advice for a newbie:
1. Read articles in the war academy
2. Build a worker first
3. Focus on improving resources
4. Play a lot and have fun
Maybe a creative leader is good for a newbie, you don't need to worry about border pops. I like Zara because he's organized. Willem is good too as he's financial.
1. Read articles in the war academy
2. Build a worker first
3. Focus on improving resources
4. Play a lot and have fun
Maybe a creative leader is good for a newbie, you don't need to worry about border pops. I like Zara because he's organized. Willem is good too as he's financial.
Sydney Posada
Warlord
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2010
- Messages
- 112
Any financial civ + spam cottages helped me without much more in terms of greater strategy through Prince...
henrebotha
proud Fender owner
Not tokugawa. :d
You said newbie, so here I go with some of the most newbie ones:
1. Settle in place. That spot is designed by the game to be "good". For learning the game, it is as good as spot as any other. As you learn more about the game, you can decide to move or not.
2. Use your first unit to explore. You are ideally looking for places to settle you next cities. Don't explore in a straight line. Spiral out from the starting location.
3. Try have three workers for every two cities (1.5 per city). Workers are very, very important units. I typically build two workers in my first three cities, and one each in all of my next cities. It works out well, and I can always build more workers as I need them.
4. In your first four or five games, try two or three different strategies. For example, in your first couple of games play around with expanding you empire and building/impriving it peacefully. This will help you learn the ins-and-outs of various city locations, buildings, worker actions, etc. Then for the next couple of games try to get into an early war. Say something like after I establish my second city, and I have copper, I am going to war with my closest neighbor. You don't have to play these games to the end, but it lets you mess around with the beginning of it.
5. Read the many articles here. Feel free to ask questions about what people mean.
mariogreymist
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2009
- Messages
- 2,201
1 - Play the map. There are situations to play peacefully (room for 6+ cities without war), and situations in which one should play bloody. Learning to do both will help you immensely moving from level to level. The diplomacy skills of a peaceful game are of marginal help when playing for domination/conquest at low levels, but are an essential part of any strategy at higher levels.
2 - Don't be a wonder whore. It's easy to do at low levels, but it will not improve your overall gameplay to build every single wonder. There is no one wonder you need to win (on most maps) and building things like the 'mids in every game can sometimes convince a new player otherwise.
3 - Build more workers than you think you need, then build some more. 1.5 per city is a good ratio, with more needed if you have lots of jungle and marginally less if there is very little forest/jungle.
4 - (related to 3) Avoid working unimproved tiles.
As to civs to try: I suggest trying a variety of civs/leaders. The easiest is Huyana Capac (inca), who can build his UU on turn 1, and if all you do is build a bunch of quechas and go kill the two nearest civs and take their capitals (very easy to do), you will have a hard time losing up to prince level. Some better ones with which to learn a variety of skills: Mehmed (ottoman), Darius (Persia), Willem VonOrange (Dutch).
Really though, it is good to play with a variety of traits and learn which ones favor your style of gameplay. Different people play the game differently, and certain leaders work better for crowding (placing many cities close together), REXing (settling as many cities as possible as early as possible), rushing (building a mass of early military units and killing 1-2 neighbors), wonder whoring (building as many wonders as possible), Cottage economy*(building many cottages to fuel
), Specialist economy* (building farms to work specialists rather than relying on cottage ) and just about every other imaginable way of playing.
* Not recommended as an exclusionary tactic - hence a cottage economy should use specialists and a specialist economy should have some cottage cities.
2 - Don't be a wonder whore. It's easy to do at low levels, but it will not improve your overall gameplay to build every single wonder. There is no one wonder you need to win (on most maps) and building things like the 'mids in every game can sometimes convince a new player otherwise.
3 - Build more workers than you think you need, then build some more. 1.5 per city is a good ratio, with more needed if you have lots of jungle and marginally less if there is very little forest/jungle.
4 - (related to 3) Avoid working unimproved tiles.
As to civs to try: I suggest trying a variety of civs/leaders. The easiest is Huyana Capac (inca), who can build his UU on turn 1, and if all you do is build a bunch of quechas and go kill the two nearest civs and take their capitals (very easy to do), you will have a hard time losing up to prince level. Some better ones with which to learn a variety of skills: Mehmed (ottoman), Darius (Persia), Willem VonOrange (Dutch).
Really though, it is good to play with a variety of traits and learn which ones favor your style of gameplay. Different people play the game differently, and certain leaders work better for crowding (placing many cities close together), REXing (settling as many cities as possible as early as possible), rushing (building a mass of early military units and killing 1-2 neighbors), wonder whoring (building as many wonders as possible), Cottage economy*(building many cottages to fuel
), Specialist economy* (building farms to work specialists rather than relying on cottage ) and just about every other imaginable way of playing.* Not recommended as an exclusionary tactic - hence a cottage economy should use specialists and a specialist economy should have some cottage cities.
Sportyatuncw06
Warlord
You can't go wrong with Romans. Praetorians are very powerful. I would also start on duel or tiny maps and work my way up to larger maps and higher levels. Smaller maps make military and diplomacy much easier. They may hurt your chance for space race because fewer trading partners leads to slower research but domination and conquest is simpler.
Negator_UK
King
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2007
- Messages
- 758
Build a bunch of axe, then go take someone elses capital. Keep one or two of his better cities as well, burn the rest. You cam do this with any leader, but any aggressive and starts-with-mining are the easier leaders traits for this strat.
Mister Wilhelm is CRE/FIN
ParadigmShifter
Random Nonsense Generator
Stalin is the only Aggressive leader who starts with Mining IIRC.
