On the Road to Glory

[Caste]

Hey guys
first time poster, I just got Civ4 after some pestering from friends. I've only played a couple of FreeCiv games before, and those didn't turn out great.
So you can see, I am having some problems with Civ4. The main areas I'm totally helpless in are:
-People angry at overcrowdedness
-Cities staying at 'Stagnent' food level
-My armies being wooped by single troops in cities.

So, I guess you can say I'm a noobie. I've only played three single player games so far against second and third difficulty AI. Haven't ventured online yet.
I went through the tutorial, and it gives you a pretty good explanation of the basics, but I know there's more into the game (the food management and such) that it doesn't explain, and this is where I am totally lost.
As I type this, I'm losing a single player game to the Japanese as the Chinese. They declared war on me and mowed through my chariot defended cities. I only have one city left, my biggest, and have no clue how I got into this situation.
I'm second last in the little leader board (the one to the right above your minimap). With 407 points. It's 1420ad


so yeah, basically...what are some of the most important points and tips should someone like me be filled up on?
Anything will help really. I just want to finally beat one of these AI and then take it online to my friends.
Thanks in advanced!

 

[KabeDerlin]

I would say stay away from Chariots as defensive units. Much better defensive units are archery units. As for the food production going to stagnant, make sure you are using your workers properly, building farms and windmills to produce more food and Watermills and Mines to produce more hammers.

There are many more tips to give you, but Ima wait for a much better player than I to pass that on.

BTW. Welcome to the forums.

 

[gravix]

Welcome! I really recommend that you browse around this forum to see what others have written on strategy, there are already some really great threads out there. Eventually there will be great strategy guides written up about this game, but since it's brand new you'll have the best luck if you do some digging.

If you're still helpless after reading more, could you provide some more specifics about your problems? You might also try dropping down to the lowest difficulty level. Really, it sounds like you just don't have the hang of the game yet. Practice, practice, practice.

 

[KristoferX]

And as far as the attacking goes. Make sure you bombard first. If you don't knock down a city's defenses first by bombarding, you have almost no chance of mounted, ranged or melee units being able to get into enemy cities.

 

[abbamouse]

Have you played RTS games? Civ IV is a bit more like Rise of Nations and its ilk than previous Civ games. What I mean is that the standard Warcraft/Age of Empires/Command and Conquer/Rise of Nations "Rock-Scissors-Paper system" of units has been implemented, a system which unrealistically provides every unit of any type with an Achilles' heel solely for the purpose of being exploited by an unrealistically strong counter unit. I find the mechanic trite, tiresome, and ham-handed -- it aims to force "combined arms" (actually diverse arms, since you cannot simultaneously attack or defend with more than one unit) through fiat rather than realistic models of combat (which also end up favoring combined arms, but in a much subtler and more natural way).

This means you'll need different units to attack and defend. You'll usually need two types of defense (early game example: Spearmen to defeat mounted units and Archers or Longbowmen to defeat melee units) and two types of attack (i.e. Horse Archers or Knights to take out pesky first-strike archery units and Swordsmen or Axemen to take out defending Spearmen).

One last consideration is that a few siege engines can really help when attacking cities, though they are less useful when defending against the AI since it rarely sends one huge stack of attackers.

 

[Caste]

yeah, I have played other RTS games...Warcraft, Rise of Nations, etc. though I'm not terribly good at them. I'm a big turtle kind of player (defensive, I don't really strike out).
I usually set my workers to 'auto improve nearest city' or 'auto establish trade route' (or however that last one is worded). For the most part that seems to get it done.

I have been reading around. Found some good tips already. Any other important tips will help.
I skimmed through the strategy guide today (school is quite literally next to a mall which houses our local EbGames) and was seeing stuff that I never even saw in my first couple of runs. Maybe it was just that their interface was different.

Things I never really care to look at are the resource mangement screen in each city, and my research value. Should I be paying more attention to to the resource mangement screen? And what are some good research levels to have your research set at throughout the game? Mine seemed to be at the 90% almost the whole way through.

 

[gravix]

Things I never really care to look at are the resource mangement screen in each city, and my research value. Should I be paying more attention to to the resource mangement screen? And what are some good research levels to have your research set at throughout the game? Mine seemed to be at the 90% almost the whole way through.

The cities tend to manage themselves quite well if you have the governor switched on, although it is beneficial to tweak in many cases. (setting up specialized cities for military production or what have you) Even if you ignore the screen completely you should still be able to win up through Noble or Prince without trouble, so it's not that big of a deal.

Research level depends on how you are playing; if you are a peaceful civ focusing on a spaceship victory, then it will be up near 90%. Warring civs may have it drop below 50%, especially if they need to accumulate lots of money quickly for unit upgrades.