Post short tips here!

I'm in favour of learning by repetition.

 

go for natanalism it is a great tech you get

1. riflemen
2. Trade embargo option
3. Mutal protection pact

Also if you want right of passage, get it after you sign the mutal, you don't have to pay a thing.

chose before the game when you want to attack your enemy before the game, then you can use it at that time.

 

Hygro;

"You Funny Guy!" =^)

 

Tired of that Civ moving settlers into your terrain? Not ready to declare war yet? Try the moving wall approach.

Several people I have read suggested building a wall of spare workers and obsolete units across a choke point on your continent. This "friendly" wall approach prevents another Civ's from coming into your territory without first declaring war against you. (Don't use workers if there is a chance they may actually declare war).

This works especially well after signing an ROP, you send your troops in to investigate an opponent and you can prevent them from crossing your borders and populating the other side of your territory.

The wall approach works great if you have a true choke point of 4 or 5 squares, or if you happen to have 20 - 30 spare units kicking around. (If you have that many spares you might as well just attack them).

It doesn't work as well on a large continent though and this also isn't very feasible early on in the game when you want to stop them and you only have about 4 units to spare.

Here is what I do, I use a moving wall;

The first thing you need to do is watch the other cities population indicators. You can tell when they have settlers on the move. If the Civ's pop counter drops from 3 to 1 you know they just built a settler, and you need to keep watch for them. If you don't see any come your way and another city pops up on their side of the continent then no problem, that settler is accounted for. Now you need to keep an eye on that city as well.

I like to keep a piece of scrap paper handy to keep track of how many workers and settlers they have active at any given time. It gives you an idea on how quickly they are moving. You would be surprised how much of an advantage you get knowing when the AI is trying to expand.

Next you need to figure out where the AI is going.

If the continent is wide open use your brain. Where would you put a Civ? Is there an open spot nearby your city that has 2 cattle and 2 dye's? Chances are the other Civ's see that as well. Trace a line from the city that produced the settler and the spot you want to protect and make sure your units can "see" that area.

You need to have about 4 units available and you need to detect where they are going ASAP so you can get into a "blocking" position.

Put your units on a mountain or hill near where you are going to "block" the enemy so you can see them coming. (The AI will rarely go around and "flank" the area they are heading for). It usually takes the straightest path.

Once you spot the incoming settler, (usually accompanied by a spearman), move your units into a line use natural blocking terrain like lakes or oceans as an end point if possible.

The other Civ will move up to your line of 4 units side by side and then try to move around you. If the settler moves to the right move all of your units one square to the right. If he moves to the left move them all to the left. Be careful you don't jog the line. The settler can move diagonally between your units then you can't catch them and block them usually.

Usually you can keep them moving back and forth or from one shore line to the other and back, until they give up. Either way it delays at least one city that the AI was trying to put down.

Keep your eyes open though. If the AI doesn't put a city down in the prime spot and you still haven't occupied that spot, it may attempt to put another settler there. If you can trap that settler as well you have just made yourself a big advantage.

Don't fall asleep and you will be able to pick off any unwanted settlings in your territory.

Don't think of it as cheating. Think of it as your troops delaying them at some check point. Very realistic.

Once you are ready to declare war on this nation these stalled settlers will be prime targets. If you can pick off all of a countries settlers this way you will basically incapacitate them.

 

In fact you don't have to read all of them.
Some threads have been written already a few times as those for instance:

Oh I got one! Before building a wonder start building a palace BEFORE you get the tech!

Also, turn down science one turn before researching for extra gold!

 

Hey JMK, those were good ones!

I'd make the joke again and stuff but things would get too spammy.

Anyway Dunkman, it's always nice when people join this website AFTER they know how o play, and not just for questions. Helps remind me that newbie CFC members can be veteran players (good advice there).

 

Hey JMK, those were good ones!

I'd make the joke again and stuff but things would get too spammy.

Anyway Dunkman, it's always nice when people join this website AFTER they know how o play, and not just for questions. Helps remind me that newbie CFC members can be veteran players (good advice there).

Also, I don't like getting nationalism unless I can get it before all the AI civs. Replaceable parts come really soon and you can sign MPPs and embargos with people that have nationalism when you do not.

 

If playing with the regicide option.

if you are in a fix barbarian or otherwise you can use your king to protect your worker. When an enemy unit attacks and is succesful the worker dies - not the king.

 

If you move your King out of the city, you will loose points which is not too good when playing regicide.

 

Lately I read a report wrote from T-Hawk's, and found, at least to me, a very good explanation on how works a mixed army.
I am copying his report to this thread trusting this will be helpfull for many players.


How does work a mixed army?
The game uses the best offensive unit in the army to attack.
The best offensive unit in the army will attack, using its own stats. If that unit loses as many hit points as its experience level would indicate, it retreats and the next best offensive unit takes over, and so on.
The converse occurs on defense, with the best defensive unit fighting until it loses its allocation of HP, then the next best, and so on.

In a given mixed army (an Elite Swordman, an Elite Archer, a Vet Musket and a Vet Spearman) the swordsman would always lead off when attacking, with an attack strength of 3. If the army lost 5 HP while he was attacking, the Elite archer took over, now attacking at only 2 strength. If the army then lost another 5 HP, the veteran musket would start attacking. If that unit still lost another 4 HP - still in the same fight - finally the spearman would begin attacking.

This means that mixed armies can be of much use in the early game. Every time the army attacks, it does so with a fresh batch of HP assigned to the leading unit; the entire process is repeated anew for each combat. Even if a 14-HP army lost 6 HP attacking on one turn, the next turn the army could attack again and the swordsman would have five fresh shots with attack strength of 3, without needing to heal inbetween. Basically, the swordsman could draw on the HP of the spearman and use it for strength-3 attacks.
The same thing can happen on defense, with the musket getting a full 4 HP worth of strength - 4 defense even against multiple attacks on the same turn (although the AI almost never attacked the army.)

Suppose you filled an early army with three horsemen, then load a knight into the army after building the Pentagon. When the army attacks, it will do so at 4 strength; and can make 2 attacks in the same turn both at strength 4 using only one knight, since the knight will get a fresh allocation of the army's HP assigned to it for the second attack.

Promotions are assigned based on whatever unit is currently doing the attacking or defending when the army wins the battle. This is why it is very hard to get a 19-HP army promoted to 20. For that to happen, the first three elite attackers all need to exhaust their 5 HP allocations, then the last veteran must win while the army has 4 HP or less remaining.

There is some weirdness when the army gets very weak, with the game switching active units in the army frequently during the army's last 3 or 4 HP. The best guess I can make is that each unit is guaranteed to have at least one HP assigned to it; attack with a 4-HP army and the best attacking unit will only attack until it loses 1 HP. But however that works, you can't really make use of it in combat.

 

Is your army of knights not cutting it in the modern era? Rather than disband them, use them to quell resistors. It's a handy way of moving a bunch of units in to a newly-conquered town, quelling up to 3 or 4 resisters at a time. And if the town flips with you army inside, you haven't really lost anything important.
Even better, after the pentagon, add a up-to-date unit to your now crappy army (preferably with the same movement points, so infantry to swordsmen, or Tank/MI to knights, say) and your army can give a hand in city defense too.

 

I just discovered a good tip! Or... maybe it's obvious, but I never noticed it before. Here it is...

After you move a settler out of the city, the game draws lines indicating how your 'culture' would expand were you to settle on that particular spot. What you might not know is that it will also show you the same information for any other spot you might choose. Simply press 'g' (for goto) and then right-click on the spot you plan to settle. The game will draw those lines assuming that the settler is actually sitting on that spot (without actually initiating the goto of course).

- Alan

 

Well, I've read all 29 pages of hints (saw the palace wonder pre-build & reset the science slider tips at least 10 times) and have one that wasn't mentioned.

We all know (or should know), that before beginning a war, make sure all of your units are outside the enemies territory unless you want the reputation hit. What you need to do though is make sure that you can still attack on the first turn.

@ - AI city
# - AI territory
* - Your military

####
*#####
######
##@###
######
#######

Your stack should contain 2-move attacking units (horseman/knights) and 1-move defenders (spearmen/pikes).

First declare war (no rep hit), then attack with the multi move units. If they start to lose, they retreat. If you are not successful in taking the city, move in the defensive units to protect the wounded troops. If you take the city and there happens to be a road from your current spot to the city, some of your defenders can garrison the town and the rest protect the troops.

This works excellent with horsemen/knights and pike/spearmen and pretty well with musket/cavalry.

If you happen to have any bombard units (I rarely build them), they can move with the foot units for support.

 

Hello,

What I want to do is post a couple techincal questions. I know this isn't the right spot, but I also know that this thread is viewed regularly. Hence I will offer a small tip to accompany my question:

Tip:

If your cities are just starting to rebel because of "war weariness" and you forgot to do a round of checking last turn, you might not know right off whether or not you should solve the problem by city-micromanagment, or a global luxury increase. When the turn starts and the first few cities come up in flames, you can postpone making the decision by "zooming to city" and then activating a defensive piece inside. If you later decide to up the luxuries, nothing is lost, however if you decide to fix each individual city, the activated unit will bring you back to the trouble spots eventually. Note as well that unit activation is also a good way to send yourself a message about polution, or some other thing you *know* you're going to forget to do later on


Now to my questions:
1. Can you have more than 1 Great Leader at a time?

2. Do you have to keep pressing "control the skies" for a fighter each turn, or is this fighter-state remembered from turn to turn?

Thanks for any answers!
- Alan

 

alancare, for questions like so, there is a much more viewed and faster answered thread, which is DESIGNED for such questions. It is stickied on the top of the General Discussions forum under the title containing the word "Newbie" you dont need to read through it at all, just ask whatever question you want to ask and it will be answered very soon. on the offchance it is not answered, ask again and it most definetly will be.

 

Thanks Hygro. I posted my question there and got an answer within minutes.

- Alan

 

Tip: use pen+paper to make notes if activated units confuse you because you can't remember why you activated them, or a text program like Notepad. To open Notepad while Civ is running, press the Windows key on your keyboard which will open the startmenu, then navigate to the text editor program. Switch between running applications with Alt+Tab.

Tip: if a newly captured town is full of unhappy people and your governor suggests to make them all entertain each other (like in the picture below), turn them into tax collectors. Tax collectors give some extar cash and can't be unhappy.

Tip: Don't rely on the number of pretty icons in the food bar.

 

I should've mentioned, in my earlier post, that if you want to use unit-activation to remind yourself about some trouble spot, you should select a conscript if there are any. That way you know that you didn't just build the thing.

- Alan

 

Sorry, I should have expressed myself more tactfully. I have worked with the activation trick a lot, in fact so much that every unit became confusing, even if it wasn't in a city.
Making actual notes is more work, but helps to gain a better of the game. I read the best players do it all the time, printing out screenshots of the map etc.

 

Feel free to give the AI Steam Power and coal, they''ll pay handsomely for both In the meantime build up an army to take advantage of the rail they're building for you when you finally tire of their existence.