Playing Civ4: From Beginning to End (incomplete)

[lastchance]

Phase 1: Spamming a (1) Settler

While getting a huge amount of cities is nowhere near as important as previous CIV's, it is still vital to get your second, and to a lesser extent depending on difficulty level, third and fourth cities as fast as possible, depending on what the actual maintenance costs of having multiple cities are.

There are 3 things you can do: Settler-Warrior, Warrior-Settler, and the Worker Chop one. I really don't think there is anything else that even comes close to being viable.

Warrior-Settler:
This gives you a bit of extra protection against barbs early, and might also let your city grow before you have to spam that second settler for a city. This means you can somewhat safely defend your cities.

Settler-Warrior:
You can get that second city ASAP here for a bit of an early lead, but if barbarians or enemy civs find you, you lose.

Worker first:
You can create that early worker and research bronze working so you can get quick production out of chops. You need mining here, and it doesn't have the flexibility that Warrior-Settler or Settler-Warrior can give you, but it allows you to keep an extra worker after the second city over the previous builds.

Phase 1.5: Pump Work Boats. Work Boats are huge. The extra food can give you a very big pop advantage of your opponent. If you've got Fishing and the resource, this resource is the easiest to exploit.

Phase 2: Worker Rush/Military Blitz/Fast Tech/Religion

This is where you can specialize based on your situation and what your Civ does. In your first turn, you normally start Phase 2 by researching the approriate Tech for what you want to do, while pumping that first Warrior and Settler.

Where you can go after you have your third city:
Worker Rush:
Workers are important in this game. You can start building farms and/or Cottages by researching the right techs. Pump to at least one worker a city and start laying down roads, farms, cottages, or chops.
Religion:
I honestly don't know how to play this, but it seems viable. With mysticism, you can beeline straight to Hinduism/Buddhism and start spreading your religion with culture and missionaries.
Fast Tech:
Pottery to Writing to Alphabet/Mathematics. Start churning out the cottages and looking for your early financial windfall.
Military Blitz:
Hook up Horses/Archery, build barracks and start looking for a civ to conquer. Try to get attack before they get Archers on defense, or attack with a very good UU.

In the high levels, one really has to find a way to defend the cities and borders. Growth, while important, must be tempered with the reality of needing an early defensive military to fight Barbarian Civs. Barbs get Archers amazingly quickly.

Phase 3: (Classical Age)
Alphabet/Mathematics/Feudalism. I just don't know what to do here.

 

[MSTK]

Too many cities means higher maintenance. It's better immediately, but in teh long run you'll start to fall behind as your income sinks.

 

[lastchance]

Too many cities means higher maintenance. It's better immediately, but in teh long run you'll start to fall behind as your income sinks.

Phase 1 is not about getting a huge amount of cities. It is about getting your second (or maybe third) city ASAP, with Worker production following closely behind.

Getting early cities is just as important as earlier civs, it's just that maintenance makes it so that you don't want a 4th or 5th city. You still want that second city as early as possible.

 

[MSTK]

Good point...and according to Gato's article, it appears that your second city will not noticeably cost you, and your third and fourth are pretty cheap. Maybe a good idea is to "cap" at 3 or 4 cities?

 

[dh_epic]

I'm not sure what difficulty you're playing at, but in my experience this would make you really vulnerable to barbarians, if not an aggressive opponent.

Not to mention that if you go for bronzeworking at the higher difficulties, you're unlikely to end up with a religion.

But if you've found it works for you, all the power to you.

 

[lastchance]

I'm not worried at all by the lack of religion. It's important, but you can certainly play without it, IMHO. Every civ that doesn't have mysticism plays without early religion.

However, you are right, this strategy is dangerous on high difficulty levels. You can go for the early worker and be relatively safe, but you may not have time to pump that second Settler out, especially if you lose your first Warrior scouting. So, after the initial second city, I would go straight to pumping Warrior/Archer on defense.

 

[phybre]

Religion can be your main source of income to offset maintenance, if you've gone through Sullla's walkthrough. It's too important to ignore. If you spread your religion around and build the holy temple, you're rolling in dough in short order. That plus a steady flow of Great Merchants means you can operate at a loss indefinitely. Capturing holy cities should be a strategic priority if you want to stay as far in the lead as possible.

Also, getting workers too early is a waste of time, since they will have little to do. If you don't start out with the wheel you can't even make roads.

 

[lastchance]

Cottages.....

By the time you finish chopping up at 3 cities and multiple Warriors, you should have enough to do. Hell, this strat doesn't even require multiple Workers, the way I played it early.

Holy Cities and that stuff is good, but it's not better than Cottages, though the extra culture boost and happiness is signifigant, so Religion is important, but giving some of that up can lead to a good development early.

 

[dh_epic]

Well it sounds like you've thought this through, and it's consistent with my experience.

Chop-to-expand is one strategy.
Religion is a seperate strategy.

I've seen both work famously. But there's no way you can try to do both at the higher difficulties. Trust me on that. It's one or the other -- unless you're very lucky or very skilled.

 

[lastchance]

Well, you don't have to go Chop/Religion. You could always go Warrior, Settler, Religion, Worker + Bronze Working and start chopping then, instead of in the extreme early game. It's a very nice way to get a quick production boost.

On Deity, I'm finding it incredibly difficult to get a reasonable amount of growth with the Barbs + the maintenance costs. It seems very difficult to keep all of that together to field anything competitive. And a military rush could be effective, but I hear you just get outteched midgame.

 

[dh_epic]

The thing with religion, too, is if you simply cannot found and forget them at higher difficulty levels. So my forest chops tend to go towards a few early missionaries, so I can get a diplomatic bonus. The worst thing that can happen is you found 3 religions, while the AI embraces none of them. It's almost a total waste.

I tend to procrastinate on bronze working with some strategies. (Religion, or Horse Rush being the alternatives to lots of expansion). But chop and settle works too.

 

[Gnarfflinger]

I gotta disagree. Play the Mongols, get the horses, and find your first target, usually when you hit the two city mark. That will get you at least a third, maybe fourth city. By then, you'll have a few Keshiks to prepare to harass the next target, and you can be ready to move on to mid game, and if you still need another city (only for resources) you know where to put it.

 

[dh_epic]

I gotta disagree. Play the Mongols, get the horses, and find your first target, usually when you hit the two city mark. That will get you at least a third, maybe fourth city. By then, you'll have a few Keshiks to prepare to harass the next target, and you can be ready to move on to mid game, and if you still need another city (only for resources) you know where to put it.

Exactly what I'm saying. Rather than founding an expensive colony, you might be able to conquer a capitol founded in a killer location... let alone a holy city. A horse archer rush -- let alone a keshik rush -- can be a better start than any amount of settler-spamming.

 

[lastchance]

I need to remake this guide. The first thing you have to do in any Civ game is create Settlers. This is still true for Civ IV (except for higher levels due to Barbs). Even with hard Barbarians, I don't think you can spend time creating more than 1 warrior early before you should create the second city.

I am not a devout supporter of ICSing and letting maintenance drag you down. I am a devout supporter of quickly spamming your second or third city. No matter what build you play, you need to get a 2nd Settler quickly. It is very hard for me to imagine anyone succeding with any start (against reasonably equal competition) without that crucial 2nd Settler after 25 turns. (ok, so a 1 on 1 map where you have warrior UU and are right next to each other, maybe).

 

[dh_epic]

Sometimes you want to build that second settler after the 50th turn. Sometimes you want to build that second settler right after you build your first unit. Both strategies can work.

The key is figuring out a path on the tech tree that will let you produce something more useful than a settler.

 

[TylerDurdon]

Phase 1: Spamming a (1) Settler

While getting a huge amount of cities is nowhere near as important as previous CIV's, it is still vital to get your second, and to a lesser extent depending on difficulty level, third and fourth cities as fast as possible, depending on what the actual maintenance costs of having multiple cities are.

There are 3 things you can do: Settler-Warrior, Warrior-Settler, and the Worker Chop one. I really don't think there is anything else that even comes close to being viable.

Im playing a 10 civ small map game and If I would have send a sole warrior with my settler the city wouldnt have last long. It was surrounded by at least 4 hungry for lands civilizations and had to choose another path....

I instead choose to build early millitary (Im Persia... and Immortal still a VERY VERY powerfull early game unit) and conquer the middle ground... smash Incas and Japan (the weakess link) after ward.... War is everywhere for those who say their's not enough wars & trades... try this!!!! this much civs on a fairly small island.... brings a lot of new ways to see this and play this game. Since its terra... we are going into the new world as well... and I liked very much the fact that even with a big amount of civs... it was still a barbarian new world.... which will be soon (for the most part) my new world... For those who wonder... I'm playing Noble. I won at this level but nothing spectacular... like space race (now turn off) and Time (if I dont acheive another kind of more pleasing victory... will be turn off too)

TRY whatever strategy you like, if you cant pull it off... plan B should never be far away !!!!

I'm completly addicted by CIV IV now after a slow start... hummm feel good to be addicted to something "go get yourself a girl..."

 

[lastchance]

War can definitely be powerful, but unless there's tons of barbs or an enemy civ very soon, you're going to be able to get a much more effective attack force with 2 cities instead of just 1. I really don't see what's more powerful early game than building that extra settler after your first warrior. Sure, if you get the ultimate military start (horses/ultra early UU + close enemy civ), go for that, but you can't get up an attack force very, very quickly and get in toward an enemy civ, I don't see how else you justify not going for the second city and rushing from there.

Well, with a 10 civ small map game, you definitely go for the war build, but the pure military/non-settler build is only good if you can take over a city very, very, quickly.

Very rough estimate:
8 turns to pump warrior for both.
25 turns to pump Settler, you get about 2-3 Archers.
2nd City founded quickly. Takes about another 30 turns for 2nd city tech to catch up to first city.

Hmmm..... The early military non-settler start may not be as bad as I thought. But, it really does require finding and bum-rushing a civ early, because if your opponent gets Archers on D, it's all for naught, and everyone who has 2 cities just outtechs, and outproduces you. Very, very gambity unless you find a second civ quickly, and I mean very quickly.

I do expect most starts to go for 2 or 3 cities, then start teching/working/rushing/praying to God.

 

[TylerDurdon]

Well, with a 10 civ small map game, you definitely go for the war build, but the pure military/non-settler build is only good if you can take over a city very, very, quickly.

What Happened is that I went to do just that... capturing a city fast... but I went too fast... destroying it!!!! But before that I went to settle there and they arrived a turn before me... I was It was the only spot available. I was lucky enough and got Horses and my UU right off the bat... by then I had already a worker, a warrior, a settler. My capital was able to pop a Immortal every 3/4 turns...

For my 3rd city I ran over their capital like just before AD, slowly going forward building up millitary mostly, setting up dumb traps to keep Cuzco weakens (putting a sole warrior alone, 2 tiles away from the city with a pile of immortal waiting to go to lunch)

it did slow me down at first... but when all was set I was WELL implanted, with a big chunk of continent, and in good shape! My only northern "treath" was Japan!!! and well they werent a threat at all

I do agree that 2 cities is a MOST do.... 3 is slightly better even if its putting you in red, theres is so many way to get out of it!!! but the most important in Civ 4.... ADAPT!!! After playing it for some games now I do think that there most be a logical way to go!!! but its becoming a lot like chess... there is no written path to victory only good players!!!

 

[Arathorn]

Getting a second city is important, but capturing it instead of building it is a quite viable option. And if you have the strength to capture, capturing a third with the same force is quite possible. Requires some neighbors, though.... And it hurts relations for a while.

Arathorn

 

[whyisciv4sobugg]

I prefer to get my 1st city to population 2 before I build the settler, so that I can build the 1st and 2nd settler more quickly, is this a bad strategy? It usually involves building a warrior and an obelisk before hitting population 2 and starting the settler.

And, what do you mean by a 3rd and 4th city? Are you just talking in the first several dozen turns of the game, or long term? I average about 7 or 8 cities in my empire before major combat, which tends to occur by the modern era. Is this too many? How can you have too many cities when they produce technology?