Quick thought on Civ 4 strategy from a veteran

[Borgholio]

Now when I say "veteran" I don't mean "Civ God". I get owned on a regular basis on the higher difficulty levels. I have, however, played every version of Civ since it was first released. After playing Civ 4, I was struck with a very simple fact that turns conventional Civ strategy on it's head. In Civ 1, 2, and 3, the strategy was simple - Settler Rush. Grab as much land as you can as quickly as you can. Don't even bother building up your cities until you've established borders and taken over all good land. In a nutshell, this stragegy doesn't work anymore.

Whereas the old strategy involved alternating Spearman / Settler / Spearman / Settler / Spearman / Worker / Settler / etc... Now it seems to be better to fortify your capital with two or three units, build a barracks, a worker, and THEN consider sending out a settler. Another thing that takes getting used to is regulating your expansion. Once you've hit 4 or 5 cities, it's actually (gasp) wise to stop expansion to allow your cities to build up their commerce and defenses.

Overall I find that Civ 4 is the best game of the series, not only is it much more streamlined that previous versions, but it's visually beautiful. I've never spent this much time playing zoomed in before in my LIFE. On the ohter hand, developing new strategies sure is tiring.

 

[Tactician Zhao]

as a veteran myself, I also have to agree that civilization 4 is the version I like the most

however, I tend to expand fairly quickly myself, getting my first settler out ASAP, usually after a worker.. I find myself pushing the limits of what I can afford to do expansionwise.. its strange, because I didn't really enjoy settler spamming, but now its like I have a way to measure how fast I'm able to expand effectively.. another thing I like about the game

 

[fightcancer]

Ditto.

Worker, settler, then focus on growth.

 

[MrCynical]

I always build my first worker before my first settler, and it isn't unknown for me to start straight away with stonehenge if I'm playing an industrious civ. Generally once I've got 4 or 5 big cities I generally only build more settlers if it's to grab resources or if there's a very good site left. It certainly isn't worth trying to use every last square as it was in the earlier civ games.

 

[Jedoc]

The only reason I try to build a second city right away is because I find it hard to keep up with major projects as well as defense early on. With two cities, I can have on concentrating on the more useful wonders, while the second creates soldiers and workers. I know you can easily pause the pyramids to crank out an axeman, if need be...but I find it nerve-wracking.

 

[Ravellion]

If you have fish in your capital, you might want to go with worker boat, settler, worker. My current game I had 2 fish in range of Karakorum. So I built two worker boats followed by 2 settlers. it was a bit of a gambit, since barbarians nearly ruined it all, but it payed off tremendously.

 

[eewallace]

I've played all of them from CivNet on, and the thing I like best so far about Civ 4 is that every game is pretty different, because starting location and leader traits make a huge difference in how I play, as does who and where the other civs are. That is, unlike Civ 2, for example, there doesn't seem to be any sure-fire strategy that will work every time.
I had one game where I had 5 cities very early on, and later sprawled out over the entire contintent but still lost to a compact civ that won the space race. And another game where I was geographically limited to only 4 cities in my starting location, and didn't add more until late in the game when I found an undiscovered barbarian-infested island. I won that one peacefully by being a high-tech commerce/science civ.

 

[Borgholio]

I always build my first worker before my first settler, and it isn't unknown for me to start straight away with stonehenge if I'm playing an industrious civ. Generally once I've got 4 or 5 big cities I generally only build more settlers if it's to grab resources or if there's a very good site left. It certainly isn't worth trying to use every last square as it was in the earlier civ games.

Yeah that's one of the hardest things for me to get used to. Whenever I see empty land, I MUST have it! Gets me in trouble, sometimes.