Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions
- Thread starter Civrules
- Start date
Cicerosaurus
Emperor
Do you mean the green, red and white?
Green means the city is growing, white the city is stagnant and red means the city is losing population (maybe due to unhappiness or unhealthiness).
dalamb
Deity
Cicerosaurus
Emperor
Thanks for that.
Now a quick question. From what i have read the AI uses some algorithm to determine when to declare war, and set diplomacy standards by using a comparison of the numbers of military units.
In the past I have always deleted warriors etc when I get more advanced units (unless they had experience points). From what I have been reading it may be more prudent to keep the old units if I can absorb the cost to stop an AI declaring war?
Not worth it. What matters from your side is your POWER, and old units give somewhat neglible amounts of that, amount of units doesn't matter. Amount of units is only a factor for the AI (just for him, not a comparison) deciding whether he wants to go to war after all after he has started plotting one.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
I concur with Silu. The only reason to keep old, obsolete units around is to boost happiness when running monarchy. Once I switch to Representation or Universal Suffrage, their maintenance costs are a drain on the treasury.
Quick answer, a food reasorce. As a general rule of thumb any city that can grow quickly will be a bonus to your empire.
The long answer is it depends what you need and what an area can give you. Generally the most important thing in theearly game is getting a strategic reasorce, so if you do not have one then that has to be a priority. After that, happiness reasorces, as you are generally at your happiness limit for most of the early game. After that, possibly health reasorces, but generally city sites that will do their job well. Eg. a cottage city is best with a food and a load of grassland. A production city needs hills and enough food to work them. A GP city needs lots of food. You see the trend?
I see. Looks like I'm in the right track after all. Another thing I'm not quite clear about yet is the City Specialization thing. Production cities I get but what about the Food and Economy ones? Should I make it a point to build my cities near at least one or two hills (or resources that give lots of hammers) no matter what role I want them to have? Because, as far as I can understand, bread and gold won't help me make buildings for that city.
I also would like to ask if there are other perfect opportunities for declaring war besides the early axe-rush and mid-game rifle drafting.
Early game, in cities with Granaries, one
is equal to about three 
. Slavery is your friend.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
Not really--some areas with plains are unavoidable. They can make decent production cities provided you can get a food resource in the BFC and irrigate everything that can't take a mine (or, possibly, watermill). If you have several low-food cities, Civil Service (for chain irrigation) and Biology (for the +1
per farm) will become a higher priority for you. Communism and a switch to State Property can also be useful in that sitch for the +1 per watermill or workshop.Not really--some areas with plains are unavoidable. They can make decent production cities provided you can get a food resource in the BFC and irrigate everything that can't take a mine (or, possibly, watermill). If you have several low-food cities, Civil Service (for chain irrigation) and Biology (for the +1
Oh no. When I said plains, I was talking about the entire package. Sometimes, I'll get such bad starts that the first city will never grow above 6 pop simply because the terrain has barely any food or hammers to get me moving.
The beginner articles I've been reading here always instantly quantum leap to City Specializations so I never really found any kind of versatile strategy that could've helped me during the countless amount of times that the Map Generator decided to be a complete jerk.
I'm actually relieved that I finally decided to ask questions here because now I'm learning stuff that I've been looking for all this time.
Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
Are you sure you're not playing a Great Plains map? 
Are you sure you're not playing a Great Plains map?
Great plains map (and other map types) are fairly predictable. With a little experience, it is easy to regen until you get a start either in the NE with lots of forest and grassland, or the SE with seafood forest and grassland river, or the NW with hills and gold and silver, or the SW with floodplains galore. So the map type Great Plains is not going to be a challenge with plains tile unless you want it to be.
In which case you will get cows, so get AH as fast as possible... if so, not all strategies are as good. Obviously, a cottage spam would be sub-optimal with such a start.
So if you are taking what you get with the first map you roll, you need to be flexible enough to adapt a powerful strategy for the start you get. That's how you win in civ4. If you the OP (I know Sisiutil doesn't need any advice I could give
) want help with deciding a powerful strategy for a given start, post a screenshot and there will be plenty of opinions offered, I'm sure. arkguy
Warlord
I have found some very interesting ideas on here and many of my own Id like to put in my game but dont know how. Im trying to get a new mod built but thats not going well since the necessary file to link the new mod file to Beyond the Sword either isnt loaded in my program files or is somewhere other than were the demo video says to look so I cant find it. Is there other ways to add new maps, resource, units, building, improvements, leader, wonders and such things to the programs so it will include them? Or in to World Builder, create customize game or similar programs by importing or something to add new items to the game build files or put one from an older version back into the new one that I want to add. How do I create my own terrains, terrain features, units, building, resources, wonders and more to build my own data base or add to the existing one would be even better? Are there any map generators or other random generating programs that are easy to use & add to Beyond the Sword?
Are you sure you're not playing a Great Plains map?
Nah. I'm just incredibly unlucky sometimes.
I normally play Earth2 or Pangea.The complete opposite even happened to me once. My first city had chock full of resources covered entirely in grasslands but when I explored the farther areas around me, I realized that the free space between me and the next rival civ was absolute desert so I was pretty much unable to expand by then unless I crossed the entire sandbox just to build another city.
So if you are taking what you get with the first map you roll, you need to be flexible enough to adapt a powerful strategy for the start you get[/b]. That's how you win in civ4. If you the OP (I know Sisiutil doesn't need any advice I could give
Well, learning how to be flexible in this game was my initial purpose for reading the articles here yet they didn't exactly help me in that department. In fact, the first two answers I got in this thread have been WAY more help in my early game performance than any of the "Beginner" guides I've read in the past week. Although, the Stack of Doom and Early Rush guides plus TMIT's Toku Let's Play were great at teaching me how to win at warfare.
Oh. Did I mention I learned how to play this game by using Toku? Stupid, I know.
Im so bad at this game..
Im on Warlord level, and I cant win wars to save my life, my import/export demographic is is worst (and have no real clue on how to improve it) and I always get out-teched in mid/late game.
Right now, im using Elizabeth on Arch-type map, not a really strong military, aiming to try my hand at a Diplomatic victory, but my stats are awful, I have no real clue on how to play, but when I read the FAQ's and Newbie guides, they dont always make sense, or they are too advanced for my level of suck.
I have 18 Civs on my game also, is the number of civs proportional to how hard the game is, or does it really mean easier overcrowding?
Im on Warlord level, and I cant win wars to save my life, my import/export demographic is is worst (and have no real clue on how to improve it) and I always get out-teched in mid/late game.
Right now, im using Elizabeth on Arch-type map, not a really strong military, aiming to try my hand at a Diplomatic victory, but my stats are awful, I have no real clue on how to play, but when I read the FAQ's and Newbie guides, they dont always make sense, or they are too advanced for my level of suck.
I have 18 Civs on my game also, is the number of civs proportional to how hard the game is, or does it really mean easier overcrowding?
Roland Johansen
Deity
Im so bad at this game..
Im on Warlord level, and I cant win wars to save my life, my import/export demographic is is worst (and have no real clue on how to improve it) and I always get out-teched in mid/late game.
Right now, im using Elizabeth on Arch-type map, not a really strong military, aiming to try my hand at a Diplomatic victory, but my stats are awful, I have no real clue on how to play, but when I read the FAQ's and Newbie guides, they dont always make sense, or they are too advanced for my level of suck.
I have 18 Civs on my game also, is the number of civs proportional to how hard the game is, or does it really mean easier overcrowding?
Being good at war and being good at economy are two separate elements of the game although they influence one another.
To be good at war, you need to learn various aspects of the war mechanics of this game
1) use direct attack siege units against stacks (more than 4 or 5 units) to weaken the entire stack and then slaughter those wounded units with your own healthy ones. You'll lose a few siege units, but it's more cost efficient.
2) use counter units against lone units or uniform stacks of units. A stack of 3 macemen can be effectively beaten by a set of crossbowmen for instance.
3) bombard city defences before you attack.
4) use large stacks with a healer to preserve your units and don't let them be picked of one by one.
5) Always attack with ample units to take a city. It's a very bad move to sacrifice a set of units to almost take a city. You'll have lost more than your opponent and made his defenders more experienced.
6) Use promotions. Especially settle great generals and build barracks so that you get more experienced units than your opponent. If you typically encounter units with one promotion less, then your units will typically win at a 2 to 1 ratio.
7) If possible attack when you have a military technology lead.
Economy:
1) In the early game, there is a limit to expanding as you don't have the means to make every city profitable quickly. However, in the mid game after markets, courthouses and the extra trade routes from currency, almost every city that you build will quickly become profitable. And then more cities means more research.
2) The research slider doesn't determine the speed of your research, it's the science points production which determines the speed of your research. An empire of 7 cities and 40% science will typically research faster than an empire of 2 cities and 70% science.
3) Intercontinental and foreign trade routes are great. Open borders for better trade income. Don't watch the import/export stat. It's almost useless and can be misinterpreted very easily. Just improve trade by creatng cities on multiple continents/island (intercontinental trade), open borders (foreign trade routes) and harbors in cities with great trade routes.
4) Cottages and specialists drive your research. Cottages take time to develop into good commerce producers but become great after a while. Specialist research is based on research points created by specialists and research generated by great people.
5) A few extremely specialised cities with national wonders can do wonders for your economy. A great person city with lots of specialists due to a huge food production and a + 100% great person rate national wonder, a gold city with a shrine of a well spread religion with a + 100% bonus to gold national wonder, a production city with lots of mined hills and some food resources to be able to work those hills and a + 100% military production national wonder and a few settled great generals, etc.
A large number of civilisations doesn't typically make a game harder. If you can take out one of those small opponents who could barely expand, then you're already about twice as strong as most of your left over opponents. So you can rapidly conquer a few cities and already be much more powerful than your opponents.
A very low number of opponents isn't necessarily harder too. The AI can have trouble sensing the opportunities to claim a huge piece of land.
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