[BTS] Newbie Questions
- Thread starter sanfierro
- Start date
Tobiyogi
King
Hello @sanfierro
some of your questions depend a bit on the game context.
1. Refusing open borders won't do you any good. First of all, religions can even spread without missionaries, just on its own, and secondly, "Free religion" can be always adopted. You can even be in some religion and the moment, you adopt Free religion, you step out of your former belief. Besides that, "free religion" gives you +1 happiness per present religion in your city.
I would not extremly rush for that wonder, because being in a mainstream religion can provide you good relations with most folks. And +10% bonus on research is not that much. You can also build a monastery (+10%) but then you need a RELIGION in that city
2. In Civ 4, you can assume, that the main income comes from your capitol and maybe your next most important city. The other cities have special tasks like generating Great Persons, building military, securing resources or strategic pathways. Analogue to your question 1, even if the +10% research from Free Religion applies to ALL of your cities, it will only have signifcant effect in little of them. Let's not talk about financial cottages, because I would recommend to play a lot with non-financial leaders in order to learn the game (financial makes it blurry and maybe too easy). As a rule of thumb, if you have good places and enough food for cottages in your capitol, then start early. You cottage the river tiles and floodplains first, then the grassland and then the plain tiles. But rivers first. If you adopt bureaucracy later, every cottage in your capitol will have its value, even grassland non-river non-financial cottages. It can be useful to build overlapping cities with your capitol because they will help growing the cottages while the capitol cannot always work them. In all your other cities, you can ofc cottage good tiles, but it depends on what the city's purpose is. Sometimes it can be worthy pretending to build a wonder (and working a lot of hammers) in order to grab the "failgold" once the wonder was completed somewhere else.
With Civil service, you will later be able to build farms on tiles that are next to an irrigated farm. It can be worth waiting for that irrigation rather than cottaging too much. In general I would say, if a city (not the capitol) has too much food, you would rather work scientists or whip armies and if a city has only average food, you will work 3-Food-Farms. In both cases, no cottages are worked because the context does not allow it.
3. Conquest is not easy! I also struggle with that. But here are some tipps. Axemen are no city raiders. You use them only when you're in dire straits. Swords are already better, because they have 6 strength plus 10% city raiding. Keep an eye on what leader you are attacking. Is he protective? Then the archers are stronger by default. Is the city on a hill? Then the archers are even stronger. Does he have a large cultural defense? (the percent number under the city name). Then you need siege units to bombard that defense. Don't warn your opponent too early. You declare war when your stack is right on his border ready to go in. If he has 6 archers in one city, then he had already too much time to react. Sometimes you must pretend to threaten another city, because the computer then tries to defend that one. If you are inside his territory and you don't see a chance to take one city, then destroy cottages, mines, (the roads can help you later) and try to lure him out of the cities. At the very least, the archers will lose their fortification bonus if moved between the cities.
some of your questions depend a bit on the game context.
1. Refusing open borders won't do you any good. First of all, religions can even spread without missionaries, just on its own, and secondly, "Free religion" can be always adopted. You can even be in some religion and the moment, you adopt Free religion, you step out of your former belief. Besides that, "free religion" gives you +1 happiness per present religion in your city.
I would not extremly rush for that wonder, because being in a mainstream religion can provide you good relations with most folks. And +10% bonus on research is not that much. You can also build a monastery (+10%) but then you need a RELIGION in that city
2. In Civ 4, you can assume, that the main income comes from your capitol and maybe your next most important city. The other cities have special tasks like generating Great Persons, building military, securing resources or strategic pathways. Analogue to your question 1, even if the +10% research from Free Religion applies to ALL of your cities, it will only have signifcant effect in little of them. Let's not talk about financial cottages, because I would recommend to play a lot with non-financial leaders in order to learn the game (financial makes it blurry and maybe too easy). As a rule of thumb, if you have good places and enough food for cottages in your capitol, then start early. You cottage the river tiles and floodplains first, then the grassland and then the plain tiles. But rivers first. If you adopt bureaucracy later, every cottage in your capitol will have its value, even grassland non-river non-financial cottages. It can be useful to build overlapping cities with your capitol because they will help growing the cottages while the capitol cannot always work them. In all your other cities, you can ofc cottage good tiles, but it depends on what the city's purpose is. Sometimes it can be worthy pretending to build a wonder (and working a lot of hammers) in order to grab the "failgold" once the wonder was completed somewhere else.
With Civil service, you will later be able to build farms on tiles that are next to an irrigated farm. It can be worth waiting for that irrigation rather than cottaging too much. In general I would say, if a city (not the capitol) has too much food, you would rather work scientists or whip armies and if a city has only average food, you will work 3-Food-Farms. In both cases, no cottages are worked because the context does not allow it.
3. Conquest is not easy! I also struggle with that. But here are some tipps. Axemen are no city raiders. You use them only when you're in dire straits. Swords are already better, because they have 6 strength plus 10% city raiding. Keep an eye on what leader you are attacking. Is he protective? Then the archers are stronger by default. Is the city on a hill? Then the archers are even stronger. Does he have a large cultural defense? (the percent number under the city name). Then you need siege units to bombard that defense. Don't warn your opponent too early. You declare war when your stack is right on his border ready to go in. If he has 6 archers in one city, then he had already too much time to react. Sometimes you must pretend to threaten another city, because the computer then tries to defend that one. If you are inside his territory and you don't see a chance to take one city, then destroy cottages, mines, (the roads can help you later) and try to lure him out of the cities. At the very least, the archers will lose their fortification bonus if moved between the cities.
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AcaMetis
Deity
- Joined
- May 21, 2018
- Messages
- 2,125
Welcome to the forums and Civ IV 
. In general I'd suggest reading through some of the shadow games on this forum and watching a few of Lain's videos, just to get a general idea of how things like diplomacy works, what options you've got, etc. Don't expect to pull crazy Deity-level stunts immediately, but knowing everything that Opens Borders does would be a good starting point. As for your specific questions:
1. No, that's not an efficient strategy. The benefit of founding a religion is that you've got guaranteed access to a religion (this only really matter is games where you're isolated until Astronomy or when you're playing something like Always War, otherwise AIs will happily found/spread their religion to you), a holy city generates I believe +5
per turn as opposed to the +1 per turn that just a religion spread generates, and a Great Prophet can build a Shrine of any religion in that religion's holy city. Keep in mind, none of those are really worth going out of your way for yourself, especially on higher difficulties. If you happen to found, say, Confu or Taoism, no harm done, but delaying worker tech to go Meditation or Poly at the start of the game can really slow down you down.
As for adopting a religion, everyone who also runs that religion will get a positive diplo modifier, and everyone who runs a different religion gets a negative diplo modifier (exactly how much depends on the AI in question - someone like Saladin gives a large bonus/penalty, whereas Stalin won't care very much either which way). Every city that has that religion present will get +1 for having your state religion present in the city. If you're running the AP religion your votes count double, and you qualify for being voted as the AP Resident if you've got more population than your competition. Most importantly, several bonuses given by Religious civics only work if your state religion is present within a city - Organised Religion's +25% 
bonus on buildings, Theocracy's +2xp on every unit build in a city, and Pacifism's +100% 
generation all don't work if you don't have your state religion present within a city, or if you're not running a state religion in the first place.
Generally the better strategy is to open borders with everyone, both to start building relationships and to improve your trade routes, as well as letting the AIs spread their religion to you. It slows them down without really hurting you at all, and in fact if you want to run something like Pacifism later it's really helpful to have AIs spread a religion to all of your cities basically for free. Otherwise you'd have to spend a lot of hammers on Monasteries and Missionaries. In addition, if a situation pops up where a very large portion of the map is running the same religion you can easily adopt it yourself and enjoy a host of diplo bonuses for relatively no penalty.
2. It depends on the map, really. There's situations where you really want Great People so you'll be running specialists anyway, there's situations where they're just not enough good tiles for cottages or enough food to run specialists, is depends. I will say that if you build the Pyramids and run Rep, focus on farms. Maybe cottage your capitol anyway, to take advantage of the Bureau bonus later, but otherwise, farms. Rep scientists are much better than growing cottages, in most situations of course.
3. Tech advantage, and siege. If you're using pre-Gunpowder units, Walls and later Castles really make it hard, if not impossible, to take a city with attackers alone. Bring along siege to bombard down defences, throw them into the city to weaken the defenders, and then send in your attackers to clean up. You'll lose some catapults/trebs throwing them against the defenders, but those are expected losses. Gunpowder units, which ignore walls/castles, can punch through defenders the hard way if you're at a tech advantage. Cuirassier can punch through longbows/pikes and Cavalry can punch through muskets, if you've got enough of them. Rifles will stop either of them dead in their tracks, however. If you're at a tech parity, use siege.
. In general I'd suggest reading through some of the shadow games on this forum and watching a few of Lain's videos, just to get a general idea of how things like diplomacy works, what options you've got, etc. Don't expect to pull crazy Deity-level stunts immediately, but knowing everything that Opens Borders does would be a good starting point. As for your specific questions:1. No, that's not an efficient strategy. The benefit of founding a religion is that you've got guaranteed access to a religion (this only really matter is games where you're isolated until Astronomy or when you're playing something like Always War, otherwise AIs will happily found/spread their religion to you), a holy city generates I believe +5
per turn as opposed to the +1 per turn that just a religion spread generates, and a Great Prophet can build a Shrine of any religion in that religion's holy city. Keep in mind, none of those are really worth going out of your way for yourself, especially on higher difficulties. If you happen to found, say, Confu or Taoism, no harm done, but delaying worker tech to go Meditation or Poly at the start of the game can really slow down you down.As for adopting a religion, everyone who also runs that religion will get a positive diplo modifier, and everyone who runs a different religion gets a negative diplo modifier (exactly how much depends on the AI in question - someone like Saladin gives a large bonus/penalty, whereas Stalin won't care very much either which way). Every city that has that religion present will get +1
for having your state religion present in the city. If you're running the AP religion your votes count double, and you qualify for being voted as the AP Resident if you've got more population than your competition. Most importantly, several bonuses given by Religious civics only work if your state religion is present within a city - Organised Religion's +25% bonus on buildings, Theocracy's +2xp on every unit build in a city, and Pacifism's +100% generation all don't work if you don't have your state religion present within a city, or if you're not running a state religion in the first place.Generally the better strategy is to open borders with everyone, both to start building relationships and to improve your trade routes, as well as letting the AIs spread their religion to you. It slows them down without really hurting you at all, and in fact if you want to run something like Pacifism later it's really helpful to have AIs spread a religion to all of your cities basically for free. Otherwise you'd have to spend a lot of hammers on Monasteries and Missionaries. In addition, if a situation pops up where a very large portion of the map is running the same religion you can easily adopt it yourself and enjoy a host of diplo bonuses for relatively no penalty.
2. It depends on the map, really. There's situations where you really want Great People so you'll be running specialists anyway, there's situations where they're just not enough good tiles for cottages or enough food to run specialists, is depends. I will say that if you build the Pyramids and run Rep, focus on farms. Maybe cottage your capitol anyway, to take advantage of the Bureau bonus later, but otherwise, farms. Rep scientists are much better than growing cottages, in most situations of course.
3. Tech advantage, and siege. If you're using pre-Gunpowder units, Walls and later Castles really make it hard, if not impossible, to take a city with attackers alone. Bring along siege to bombard down defences, throw them into the city to weaken the defenders, and then send in your attackers to clean up. You'll lose some catapults/trebs throwing them against the defenders, but those are expected losses. Gunpowder units, which ignore walls/castles, can punch through defenders the hard way if you're at a tech advantage. Cuirassier can punch through longbows/pikes and Cavalry can punch through muskets, if you've got enough of them. Rifles will stop either of them dead in their tracks, however. If you're at a tech parity, use siege.
Tobiyogi
King
I would also recommand some of Absolute Zero's Videos. He sometimes does "forbidden" things you normally wouldn't do, especially on the highest difficulty, but he wins a lot of his games (at least the ones that are published 
)
I find him highly amusing, it's pure entertainment. Lain on the other hand has certainly a deeper understanding of the game and he makes barely any mistakes.
Here is an old video from AZ that I just remembered:
It shows something between an Axemen/Swordsmen rush. The chosen civ is Sumeria and their axes have 6 strength.
You will hear most people say that Axerush on very high levels won't work, but all depends on the given situation.
)I find him highly amusing, it's pure entertainment. Lain on the other hand has certainly a deeper understanding of the game and he makes barely any mistakes.
Here is an old video from AZ that I just remembered:
You will hear most people say that Axerush on very high levels won't work, but all depends on the given situation.
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- Joined
- Mar 11, 2008
- Messages
- 27,063
I think your distaste for religion spread comes from Civ V, right? In IV, it is not a bad thing at all. It gives you culture and possibly a religion to adopt if it is suitable diplo-wise, to take advantage of religion civics. Founding your own early religion is highly not advised as it diverts the player from important early worker techs, especially food and bronze working. Let the AIs found religions and spread them to you. Furthermore, not opening borders prohibits two important things...a gradual diplo boost, and eventually lucrative foreign trade routes. With that said, you need to be aware of what is going on with the other leaders if you met several early. Who is worst enemies? Is one leader in particular rather hated by most? Several factors are behind this, but you might consider not opening borders with a particular leader early if more than one leader thinks of them as Worst Enemies (note: this can fluctuate as well). Otherwise, Open Borders with everyone.
My is working on a nice new article stickied at the top of the forum called beginner help. I think that is a good place to start for learning some of the basics. Otherwise, post a shadow game here for very detailed advice.
My is working on a nice new article stickied at the top of the forum called beginner help. I think that is a good place to start for learning some of the basics. Otherwise, post a shadow game here for very detailed advice.
As Lymond gave very good (and very short!) answers to 1 and 2, I will answer only question number 3.
To have success with warfare in Civ 4 you've got be fast, very fast. Time is essential. Your problem with 20 axemen is probably that
they obsolete before you even finished building them. It took too much time to build them, and in the meanwhile AI has built walls or built up culture denfence and built units as well. You need to learn to build your army faster and this is a too complex subject to be properly explained in one post.
Anyway, since you play on Noble, you can try some relatively simple ways of conquering. Noble AI can be destroyed in pretty much any way you fancy, including warrior rush. Here is your homework: figure out the best way to warrior-rush a Noble level AI. Do you need 2nd or 3rd city? May be, only build a worker to build improvements around your capital? Do you even need a worker? May be just set your only citizen to work a 3 forested plains hill and start building warriors rightaway?
To have success with warfare in Civ 4 you've got be fast, very fast. Time is essential. Your problem with 20 axemen is probably that
they obsolete before you even finished building them. It took too much time to build them, and in the meanwhile AI has built walls or built up culture denfence and built units as well. You need to learn to build your army faster and this is a too complex subject to be properly explained in one post.
Anyway, since you play on Noble, you can try some relatively simple ways of conquering. Noble AI can be destroyed in pretty much any way you fancy, including warrior rush. Here is your homework: figure out the best way to warrior-rush a Noble level AI. Do you need 2nd or 3rd city? May be, only build a worker to build improvements around your capital? Do you even need a worker? May be just set your only citizen to work a 3
forested plains hill and start building warriors rightaway?
6K Man
Bureaucrat
1. Founding a religion generally isn’t worth it. The benefits (happiness, culture, shrine income) are outweighed by the detriments (researching Mysticism, etc prevents you from spending time researching other more important techs; you need a Great Prophet to build a shrine, and Missionaries to spread the religion; rival AIs may hate you if you adopt your religion and not theirs)
2. Cottages, if the choice is binary. Otherwise, I’d say:
3. Bring more siege (Catapults, Trebuchets). Half your attack force should be siege. Bombard defenses to 0%, then attack with the siege to inflict collateral damage on the defenders. Your aggressive Axes can then mop up.
a. ADOPTING a religion that most of your neighbours follow is a good way to keep them happy with you, and if you don’t adopt a religion, you can’t benefit from civics like Organized Religion and Pacifism. Beware that followers of other religions may hate you, though. In a game with several different religious blocs, choose your side carefully, or in some cases, don’t adopt a religion.
2. Cottages, if the choice is binary. Otherwise, I’d say:
a. Cottage your Capital and sites with grassland rivers or floodplain
b. Build one Farm-heavy city to generate Great People at a site with lots of food
c. Everything else should be production-oriented.
b. Build one Farm-heavy city to generate Great People at a site with lots of food
c. Everything else should be production-oriented.
3. Bring more siege (Catapults, Trebuchets). Half your attack force should be siege. Bombard defenses to 0%, then attack with the siege to inflict collateral damage on the defenders. Your aggressive Axes can then mop up.
a. If you don’t have the techs to build Catapults or Trebuchets, speed is the key. You’ll want to attack before your opponent has time to build up defenses (declare war when your stack is RIGHT on their border), and ideally, before they can connect Copper, Iron, or Horses.
ArchGhost
Prince
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2016
- Messages
- 584
Watch some of the great resources on Youtube like Absolute Zero or Lain to see how they assemble armies and the tactics they use. A lot of attacking, especially early attacking, is going fast so you catch the AI with their pants down.
I like watching Imploding's stuff too, as he's a little different in approach sometimes, such as using often neglected swordsmen. This game was really good and showcases some power of that Aggressive trait:
