I have been playing Civ since the first one came out (all those years ago) but with Civ 4 I seem to be faring much worse than I did when play Civ I, II or III.
Reading what some people here have put as strategies I get the impression that it isnt necessarily a good idea to try to build every improvement in every city and that 'specialising' cities is also important (one for research, one for GP, one for Unit spamming etc)?
Any thoughts?
Some posters will exaggerate the specializing advantages a bit, but there is a point to it sometimes. It is a good idea to add Wall Street to a city with a Shrine to multiply the income of the Shrine. It's a good idea to add Oxford University to a city with a huge commerce income so that the science produced by that city is multiplied by the Oxford bonus. It's a good idea to add the National Epic to a city which is producing many great person points. It's a good idea to add the Heroic Epic to a city with a large production so that you can produce units in that city very fast. Some of these small wonders also combine well with each other. For instance, Heroic Epic to produce units fast and West Point to give these units extra experience.
You also don't have to build every single building in every city. Some buildings are more useful than others. For instance, walls and castles are considered not that useful by many. You might want to build them in a really threatened city or build a castle in a city for the trade routes if the trade route would add a lot of commerce and you have stone to quicken the construction speed. But normally, these buildings are not that great.
Just in general, don't build a building in a city when it won't help you a lot. For instance, a courthouse won't help a lot in your capital, but will help you more in a distant city. This doesn't mean that you should never build a courthouse in your capital, it will still help there. But it is not your first priority.
A library isn't very useful in a city that is only producing 3 science, a forge is not very useful in a city that is only producing 3 hammers, etc.
Still, many buildings are useful in every city. When a city becomes large, you'll often need a market for extra happiness and a grocer for extra health.
Some people like to specialize every city, create cities specialised in commerce and adding libraries and universities but not forges and factories and create cities specialised in production and add forges and barracks for unit production. I personally don't find that so useful and I'm not a beginning player. The problem with this is that you also need some production to get the science buildings and the happiness and health buildings to get a big commerce metropolis. So I very seldom go for pure commerce cities without any hammer output.
There are other differences between civ4 and previous version of civ.
-Far more terrain improvements. You need to learn when to use which one. Cottages are considered powerful by many, but most cities also need other terrain improvements.
-Early expansion hurts your research. You can't expand indefinitely without improving your economy because cities have a city maintenance.
-Cities don't grow when building workers and settlers and thus you can't develop them into great commerce cities to support your expanding empire while buildings these 2 units.
-Siege units are required to take cities. They're useful for removing the defensive bonus and for attacking with collateral damage to many defenders in the tile.
These 4 hurt beginning civ4 players who aren't aware of these differences compared to previous version of civ.
After playing Civ3 for a while after Civ4's release, I'm transitioning to Civ4...I have Warlords 2.13.
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