Hey Everyone,
This is my first post. I'm new to Civ 4 and also to this message board.
Well.. I just finished my first game (Beyond the Sword) and I wound up middling, losing on a Time Victory.
I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. One thing I did right was I had out-teched all of my opponents by a large margin. Most of my problems stemmed from my more technologically advanced units repeatedly losing military battles to inferior units. It seemed like whenever the AI's turn came, his weakened unit would still be able to take down my unit, many times my unit was new and unscathed, and many times my unit was decked out in promotions. It was very frustrating.
Any advice as to what I was doing wrong? I already know about reducing a city's fortifications to close to 0% before you attack. Is there something else?
First off, welcome to CFC!
It's good that you are using siege weapons (I assume) to reduce city fortifications before attacking. However, you should also be using those same siege weapons (catapults, trebuchets, cannon, artillery, etc.) to cause collateral damage to multiple defenders before attacking with your main units. You will lose some siege weapons--possibly several of them--but more of your strong attack units will survive.
If you weren't doing this, it's not too surprising that you lost some apparently lopsided battles. Longbowmen, for example, get defensive bonuses for being fortified in a city on a hill (and the AI loves to plant cities on hills), and they can be painful for Riflemen or even Infantry to take on in that situation. And if the AI has several of them (and it usually does), then, well... ouch.
In addition, you say you lost a time victory--I assume the AI won the time victory, then, rather than winning by some other means. If you were having trouble militarily, this is not too surprising. The three biggest factors in your final score are (1) your population, (2) your land, and (3) how early you finish. Tech level and wonders are in there too, yes, but not nearly as much as those other three. If you were struggling to conquer territory, then an AI civ may have exceeded you in land and population even if it lagged behind you in technology.
And the longer you wait to win, conversely, the lower your score. Though I'll grant the AI should be affected in the same manner, so finishing late shouldn't, in and of itself, result in a loss--however, as you play more games and begin to compete against yourself and register higher-scoring victories, you'll notice that the games where you win sooner result in higher scores. Factoring in land and population, it becomes obvious that the highest scores are usually obtained through relatively early domination wins. I'm not saying this is the only path to victory--cultural, diplomatic, conquest, and space race wins can also be fun and challenging--just that, as I said, a domination win usually displays the best exploitation of the game's scoring mechanics.
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" where the o is a little circle. Unless I utterly fail at basic mathematics, these don't actually appear to add production/food to your cities, so what does it mean?
