Progression from Easier difficulties

[steviejay]

I originally thought this was a newbie question. But what I am asking is not really how to do something but more a little help.

I've been playing Civ for as long as I can remember, since the first Civ on the good old Atari ST but I don't really seem to get getting anywhere in terms of skill. I look at the Screenshots of the day and read about other players on the forum and I see people getting about 500 gold a turn with only 40% tax or completing the game with only One City.

I don't have any idea how this can be done. I play on Warlord level and I get about 5 gold a turn throughout.

I tend to stick with Monarchy, dispite the corruption as I tend to be pretty Warlike however I have started to experiment with Democracy.

Can anyone give me any tips which would allow me to progress further and at least get up a difficulty level.

 

[DaveMcW]

Read all the CFC strategy articles.

 

[zagnut]

The strategy articles can be found in the War Academy. To get there go to the Main page and click on War Academy in the left sidebar. All of the strategy you will need to play the game can be found there.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Other than reading the articles, there isn't much we can do for you without having more information. Posting a saved game would give us a wealth of information so we could give more detailed responses into what you may be doing wrong/what you could do better.

But so far it sounds like you are waging war, pretty much non-stop. You are likely building too many units and neglecting infrastructure like marketplaces. Though, you may be eventually pounding down your neighbor, the rest of the world is surging ahead. Make the wars quick and effective, so you can get peace when you want it and end it quickly after achieving your goals. So you have more time to build temples, marketplaces, cathedrals, etc. Don't use automated workers (at least not until you get out of despotism), and even then use shift-A, not just 'A'. How many workers do you use? A common mistake by new players is simply just not having enough workers. You want a MINIMUM of 1 worker/city if industrious, 2 workers/city if not industrious.

 

[Marx]

Owk... I am interested too.. Are there programs that log your moves / actions.. I want to know what mistakes I make..

 

[SanPellegrino]

And an overall advice: make plans! Some people just adopt to the situation, and that isn't bad, but only if you act with a purpose you can direct the game in your favor.

e.g: choose your opponents, don't let them pick you. Has Civ A luxuries you don't have? A good land chunk where you can put your palace/FP? Can you thrash techs out of them wen making peace? Or are you just wasting your time with them?

A bad plan is always better than no plan!

 

[Samurai X]

if you have market place, banks, stock market, roads, you should be able to get a hefty amount of money especially if you trade with other nations. size of cities and number of cities with those things is also important. republic and democracy should make you more money especially since it helps worker speed and technology so that you haf things you can trade with other civs besides resources and luxs. remember that roads are very nice because they instantly get gold from them if its on a grid your citizens are working on. if you consider having a pop of 12 meaning every grid is being worked by a citizen and roads on every grid, you should be able to push your tech up to 70 or 80% at times especially if you have the market places etc... helps to also micromangage your workers 2 build roads first where he should instead of just putting them on auto.

Smith Trading Company is nice because you dont have to pay for all those market places, banks and stock markets you have. trading with other civs is key though. figure out what they want and need and milk as much $/turn out of them as possible.

Lastly, depends on what difficulty you playing on. Easy to make large bucks with accellerated production and on chieften or regent for example, but it'll be more difficult if you are playing on deity.

 

[Phantom Lord]

First of all, it probably dependes on the type of civ you play, especially industrious (faster builders = more roads) and / or commercial (less corruption) civs have advantages in collecting money.

The government types that are best suited to make money (republic, democracy) pay for every unit and dislike war. Therefore a peaceful playing style saves money. You can still switch to monarchy or communism in case you want to go war against a single civ, but then build your army when you need it, rush the enemy and go back to general peaceful style and government.

Last but not least, simply don't build stuff you don't need (eg do you need airports everywhere if you don't want to rush another continent by airmailed tanks?). Build things that save money directly (Adam Smith, Wall Street) or indirectly (all happymakers and wonders that act as buildings for the whole continent) if you can. Few large cities can be better than many small ones, because this keeps corruption down.