Question from noob/beginner

[jaytran259]

I've known this game for long and did try to play it long ago but I could not understand how the whole game work and struggle from the beginning phase of the game with overwhelming available information (from managing the city growth, how many city is enough for ur current state, should I go war or set up piece with my neighbour...). So till now, I wanna get back to the game in the occasion of release of Civ 6. But there is some questions that have been left unanswered which still I want to clarify.
1. I've been searching for info about city's border spread by culture point but most posts telling abt what culture is and what it is used for, but not the way to control it. There was one game that my city near India and my City border have been lost to indian border as indian culture was so strong. So how could that be and what can I do to deal with that?
2. in early game with few 10-50 turns, I go well with my city's growth until my city border is stagnant as my city cant produce anymore food from tiles in border. What is the problem and what can I do about it ?
3. How could I strategically planning for my victory from tech path, economy to not stay behind and win the game? Please give guide from beginning to master the game.
4. How can you decide the number of city you have and how to know you can be able to expand your Civ?
5. I tried to conquer my neighbour in Ancients or Classical Era (to my recollection) and my city's happiness is so high make everything broken down from food to production. How to deal with this? in what factors, to decide to go war with other civ? and what era is best for your conquering ?

Please help me to clarify and reapproach the game better.

Thanks

 

[Fistleaf]

General advice: Start at Noble or below difficulty. If you want to win, you should invade at least a weaker neighbor, to get more cities, to gain XP for your troops, to get a Great General, and force the civ to be your vassal (capitulation) if possible.
1. In your city screen at the bottom left hand corner, there is a culture bar. When your culture bar is full, city borders will expand outwards by one radius. This will repeat a few times with exponentially more culture needed for expansion. If your neighbor is generating much more culture than you, it will eventually overwhelm your city borders. Easiest way to deal with that is to invade your neighbor.
2. Each city size growth requires 2 more surplus food to feed the citizens. If your city doesn't produce surplus food, city cannot grow. Build some farms on grasslands that have fresh water access, so that the tile produces 3 food (= 1 surplus food).
3. You need to earn enough gold to keep science slider at 60% or higher. This will ensure you don't fall behind in science. To earn enough gold, easiest way is to build plenty of cottages on grasslands (but this means you can't farm the tile for surplus food). Let the cottage grow over time, build marketplaces/banks in cities that have profits. Initially it will be hard to break even, but once the cottages grow to villages and towns, your money problems should be over. Another way to earn gold is building coastal cities, the sea tiles provide you 2 gold each. Once you learn how to earn gold, maintain high science %, and maintain a decent defending army, you can formulate your own strategies to win the game.
4. At standard map size, you can build/conquer about 5-6 cities before maintenance gets too high. If you see that you cannot earn any more gold without dropping science slider below 60%, then you have overexpanded. Then see part 3 above to earn money to invade/build more cities.
5. I suppose you mean unhappiness becomes too high. If you lose troops or kill enemy troops in enemy territory, or if you capture enemy cities, your war weariness will increase and unhappiness will start showing up in your cities. You will need to keep your people happy with luxury resources, buildings like temples, or station troops in your cities (for this you need to use civic Hereditary Rule, which is discovered with the tech Monarchy). Early war is better if you can maintain better/more troops than the enemy (again see part 3 to earn gold). If not, wait until your economy and science is strong enough to build a conquering army.

 

[6K Man]

Culture is produced by culture buildings, which include things like Libraries, Wonders, and Monuments. Civilizations with the Creative trait also produce 2 free culture/turn per city. When a city has produced 10 culture (at normal speed) its culture spreads from 1 tile around the city to two (forming a cross shape, known as the BFC (big fat cross) here). Additional culture thresholds (100 culture and so on) allows for further expansion of city culture. When being pressed by AI culture, you can respond by building more of these buildings in the city in question (or building Culture itself, after you learn Drama). The better solution, though, is to be aware of where you settle your cities so you don’t choose spots that will be unable to grow due to cultural pressure. Or as Fistleaf says, you can conquer/raze the offending AI cities.

Each citizen of a city ‘eats’ 2 food per turn. So a size 4 city needs a minimum of 8 food/per turn to avoid losing food and eventually having citizens starve and disappear. So, you should prioritize founding cities near food resources, or grassland rivers/lakes that you can build farms around. If your city doesn’t produce culture, it will not be able to work any tiles other than the 8 squares surrounding the city square. In such cases, you should either settle next to a food resource, or prioritize a Monument or Library to allow for cultural growth which will let you work up to 20 squares around the city.

There’s no one guide to winning, because different approaches can be successful. Here’s my top 10 tips.
1. Build a worker first.
2. Improve food resources first, then other resources. Research the techs that will allow you to build the appropriate improvements (farms, pastures, mines, quarries etc) on the resources you have.
3. Next, prioritize learning Bronze Working, which will allow you to chop forests and run the Slavery civic (allowing you to sacrifice citizens for enhanced production).
4. Grow to size 3 or more and improve your food resources before building a Settler. While growing, you can build Warriors (or Workboats, if you have seafood to improve)
5. Your next research goal is Writing. Build a Library in your capital, and if you have enough food to do it, run 2 Scientists to eventually get a Great Scientist for an Academy in the capital.
6. Don’t worry about keeping the slider above 60% or any other number. Instead, try to increase your total commerce by improving luxury resources (Gold, Silver, Gems, Wine, etc) and building Cottages on riverside grass or floodplains. Having the science slider drop below 30% temporarily is normal.
7. Try to connect at least one strategic resource (Copper, Horses, Iron) early, to allow you to build better defenders than Warriors. If you choose, you may be able to take out a neighbour that way, too.
8. Currency is your next priority. It provides you with an extra trade route per city, lets you trade extra resources and techs for cash, and lets you build Wealth. Currency solves the problem of a low science slider.
9. Don’t chase religions
10. Don’t build wonders that you don’t have the resource for (e.g. don’t build Pyramids without stone).

Expand until you run out of room, good city sites (no point in founding a city on poor land without resources) or money (unless you are about to learn Currency).

If you have unhappiness in the Ancient or Classical era, the simplest solution is to use the Slavery civic and sacrifice unhappy citizens. Or you could run the Hereditary Rule civic, which makes units in a city pacify unhappy citizens. As for war – don’t go to war with nations far away from you, and don’t keep every city you capture. Keep AI capitals and well-sited cities with a decent population; raze the crappy cities with 1-2 population and few improvements/resources.

 

[jaytran259]

Thanks for your tips.
On high difficulty level, your Ai opponent will have more advantage and their score will be much higher than yours, and eventually start WAR with you. So is that you should not be fallen behind?? and what can you do to counter an extremely neighbour Civ with fast expansion and taking up much space while their army is much stronger than you ??

 

[Fistleaf]

At higher difficulty levels, at the start of the game, you need to already start planning to invade your neighbor, otherwise you will not have much land to expand and you have to deal with their high culture. If it is already too late, then you have to use diplomacy, maybe using same state religion to influence a few friendly civs to be your allies.

 

[ArchGhost]

Thanks for your tips.
On high difficulty level, your Ai opponent will have more advantage and their score will be much higher than yours, and eventually start WAR with you. So is that you should not be fallen behind?? and what can you do to counter an extremely neighbor Civ with fast expansion and taking up much space while their army is much stronger than you ??

Score itself incorporates many things such as which techs are known, military power, population, etc so it's not really that important to focus on for the most part. Since the AIs play much differently than a typical human player (growing way more, whipping less, spamming more units, collecting many techs without much direction, etc) score can be a poor judge of an AI' standing in relation to yourself (especially as the difficulty goes up), though it's a fair tool to compare AIs to one another. A more important piece of information is the comparison of military powers between they and you, as it gives more useful guesses about things like whether you'd be able to fight back if attacked, if you can take someone on, how hard they'll fight back before capitulating, etc. etc. You need to have enough EP ratio on them to see this, though as long as you don't touch anything and they don't hate you (they EP focus you if they don't like you) it should sort itself out after enough turns. You also need to watch the technology screen in the Diplomatic Advisor screen after you acquire the Alphabet tech, so once you have a good grasp of the tech tree you can see each AIs (near) exact tech state.

The easiest way to stay in contention in the tech race is to either learn how the Great Person bulb paths work, or become familiar with the old standard of cottages + academy in the capitol. Either way it's very important to know what you should be teching and not chasing pipe dreams or unhelpful technologies that AIs are sure to have already. As already mentioned, avoiding wonders without the resource for building is an example. Another is not going for certain tech yourself and instead teching more useful things and then just trade back later...an example might be not teching Iron Working yourself, instead make your way to Alphabet (or trade for Alphabet) first and then trade it out of somebody. You can avoid the entire Music line for a very long time if you never care about going for higher tier mounted units or don't have marble to use on the wonders it unlocks. AIs are often sure to chase the religions so you shoudln't; there is little benefit to founding your own religion that you can gain over just having the AIs give them to you. The AIs are big fans of picking up tech like Monarchy > Feudalism > Guilds line, so it's more useful to trade for those than just tech alongside with them, etc. Things like that.

On Deity it's often forgone that'll you'll be behind for much of the game and surrounded quickly depending on the map type, and it can happen on lower difficulties too if you delay expansion too much by doing wonder stuff or prepping a rush or something. The solution is to either: hit early with a rush designed to take territory by force before they have collected a lot of units, or play careful diplomacy to stay in good graces while you tech up to a later attacking tech.Diplomacy is very powerful in Civ 4 and the key to most games. You can often stay more or less alive just by refusing to run a state religion, as religious strife is a magnet for AI aggression, they WILL adopt differing religions, and most likely bother each other. Special attention should be paid to not pissing off your bordering neighbors as much as you can help it, as those sharing your border are more likely to actually target you for attack. Do things like gift them techs, share resources, keep open borders, give in to their demands if you have to, etc. Distant Ais can still hit you, but are more likely to go after someone else THEY border instead, if you don't make them too mad at you.

 

[Fippy]

Best way is jumping into strategy & tips, and reading other learning game threads or starting your own.
Many peoples help you there with step by step playing (if you have patience, can play other games while waiting for replies).