Shadow Game Coaching?

[Rynian]

Who'd be down to shadow me and teach me some ropes? I play mac, I live in the US, and I do enjoy the History rewritten mod, but learning vanilla would be cool too.

I can do fairly decently if I get a good start, but if my start is average or below I get creamed.

Not sure how to set it up, another user just reccomended it to me.

 

[lymond]

Just set up a game with normal settings.(normal maps, no huts, no events, leader does not matter). Pangaea map is probably best for learning as it ensures diplo immersion. Roll at least a start with decent visible food resource (corn/pigs), ideally not coastal.

Lots of folks will help you out here. Just post up a save and a screenshot. Get advice at turn 0 and the play very short turns sets.no more than 10 turns.

I"m not sure what level you play on, but I recommend playing at least Noble/Prince for this game..but if you are already playing higher levels than that, then all the better.

 

[Rynian]

hmmm that sounds a bit too cumbersome, I think Ill learn myself

 

[lymond]

Ha..not sure what is cumbersome about it. You are the one who wants to learn. Anyway, I just gave you guidelines. Ultimately, it is up to you to run your shadow game, so feel free to play within your comfort zone. Just getting some advice in your game will go far.

And if you are impatient to play, which honestly a lot of folks are, you can always just run separate games to play at your pace. Just save the shadow game for learning and slower play, playing it whenever you choose.

 

[Rynian]

I appreciate it. I may do one if I have problems in the future still.

 

[Benginal]

No need to create your own game, necessarily. Just download and play along with any of the other games being played in the forums.

The Noble's Club games are good. Even if you don't post, just playing it yourself and then seeing what other people did differently is hugely helpful.

 

[InovA]

Exactly when Benginal said. Noble's Club games are fun to play and fun to look through others' strategies. And watch Absolute Zero's playthroughs (https://www.youtube.com/user/Chris67132), he explains a lot of what he's doing and why.

 

[Rynian]

noble's games?

And am currently in the industrial era in my current game. I am japan, and I destroyed mongolia to my west, though I am in near last place in the pangea. To my north is carthage, to my west the holy roman empire. Carthage is in second or third, but I paid him handsomely to declare war on the HRE so I'd have an ally in my invasion since we share a smaller boarder and hannibal just really likes me.

My army is an awkward mix of samurai, curassiers, musketeers, and trebuches. wtf. BUT Im doing well so far. Might attack hannibal next, or keep going westward perhaps.

To my east are the first and second place civs portugal and china.

 

[InovA]

Nobles' Club games, any posts you see in the Strategy and Tips section starting with NC or specifically say Noble's Club.

Nobles' Club 188 - Genghis Khan of Mongolia is the most recent one (though it seems tougher than most, maybe try another)
Nobles' Club 185 - Suryavarman II of the Khmer is a good pick.

Hell, you could go through the archives and find the older ones and give them a try. If you add a reply post to them, they'll still come back to the top of the forum so people will be able to give advice on it other than advice/strategies already listed previously in the thread.

And the difficulty is up to you in these games, their download pack has a save for each difficulty and for whether to play with or without Huts and Events. For learning, it's recommended to play without them, to remove randomness. I never play with them anymore.

And listing a game the way you have gives little information for anyone to try and give advice on. We don't know your tech choices, city systems, how the enemies are doing, what your economic choices have been or how your empire looks overall.

An example I'll give is the write-up I used for NC 67, when a player asked for help with it on Noble difficulty:

Spoiler :

Hi Diego!

I started this game on Noble to match what you would see (normally I'm on Immortal difficulty) and played up through 1000 BC. Here's my brief overview:

Settled 1S1W to get the Deer + Cow for my city.

City Build:
Worker - Warrior - Settler(@3pop) - Settler - Worker (Whipped) - Oracle (2x whip) - Library (2x whip)
Tech Path:
Hunting -> Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> Pottery -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Writing -> Alphabet -> Currency

2nd city starts @2480 BC, 3rd: 2040 BC, 4th: 1000 BC, 5th: ~720 BC (if I continued)
2nd city starts working the Deer camp to raise pop quickly, later would give back to Capital after it has the southern cow pasture.

Whipped 2nd worker at 1960 BC, overflow going into Oracle is nice, plus the worker can start chopping to help get Oracle sooner.

b/c this is noble, I decided not to use Oracle -> Metal Casting -> Pyramids trick, instead just straight-forward play and planned for Cottage Economy + Tech selling.
1440 BC, 4 forests chopped, double whipped Oracle (unnecessary whips, but meh.)
Oracle used on Metal Casting because it's a decent tech and it has the highest cost available at the time.

1280 BC - Got Alphabet, traded Writing to Egypt for Fishing + Archery.
1160 BC - Traded Hannibal 4 minor techs for Iron Working.

At this point I have a pretty clear lead and I'm 1000-2000 ahead of everyone. Although there aren't many good resources nearby to help with early wars (other than copper), if you set up some roads to other civs I'm sure you can trade for iron/ivory and go for some sort of killing blow to a civ or 2 before 500 AD, translating the clear tech lead into a clear army/land lead.

2nd city location:

Spoiler :

3rd:

Spoiler :

4th: (And planned 5th) (6th city planned south of capital, sharing cows, owning pigs)

Spoiler :

Tech lead:

Spoiler :

As for the issue with production, you have plenty of ! You don't need so long as you have , , and whipping!

You can try playing from this save @ 1000 BC if you think it will help you, otherwise just following the basic overview should get you near the same position which looks to be winning pretty heavily.

*Note: Lincoln is the worst enemy of 3 civs, so I will not open borders with him. Tokugawa and Churchill are worst enemies, I think Churchill is closer to me than Tokugawa so I'd rather not open borders with Tokugawa yet. This will help deter bad relations by preventing those "Stop trading with so-and-so or we will be mad!" screens.

I explained what was happening tech-wise and showed my city location and timing choices. It's a good layout and another player would be able to see what's going on in my game from a glance and tell me which choices they disagree with, etc.

 

[Gumbolt]

You are playing Vanilla Civ 4?
Difficulty level? Monarch? Prince? Noble?

Just cause it is called Noble club does not mean you have to play at Noble level. The saves provided are for all levels. Albeit the game starting saves are for the Beyond the Sword expansion.

Almost impossible to help based on a few line description of a game. Especially when you state industrial era. (End stages of the game.) From your description it sounds like you are way down in the rankings for this stage. Too few cities early on is my guess. How many cities do you have? 5? 10? 20?

In any case without posting a save you will struggle to get any real advice here. If you just wish to post stories about your saves there is another section for that.

Overall if you truly want help from people here they will be more than happy to help. You do need to put some effort in such as posting a save that people can view or screenshots for people to comment on.

 

[lymond]

Just cause it is called Noble club does not mean you have to play at Noble level. The saves provided are for all levels. .

To clarify, all levels Noble and above.

I think if he's using History Rewritten Mod, he's probably been using BTS.