Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners

What happened to the instructions for dot-mapping? I need that for my current game! Thanks.:)
Dot-mapping deserves its own guide and I never bothered to write one. I think there's one around here somewhere...
 
There is an outline of dot-mapping in your Version 2.0 -December 22, 2006 of this Guide. Sorry to say, but I found your explanation confusing. Blame that on me! I never claimed to be a math major.
 
There is an outline of dot-mapping in your Version 2.0 -December 22, 2006 of this Guide. Sorry to say, but I found your explanation confusing. Blame that on me! I never claimed to be a math major.
No, I blame it on myself, which is why I took it out. It was riddled with errors, IIRC.
 
"Please note that this document is not meant to be a definitive collection of Civilization IV strategies. Furthermore, in a game as complex as Civ IV, many different strategies may be effective, including some that run counter to the advice listed here."

The problem is that the 60% rule starts players off with a bad habit that they're going to have to drop. I've long contested this rule and the refusal to change it, but I can't think of a single class of player (utter newbie, played for 1 week to 1 month, more experience, etc) that would benefit from obeying it. If anything, it is going to scare rookies away from expanding onto power tiles when that should be their priority. It isn't that there are "lots of ways to play", but rather that following this particular piece of advice is a consistently bad choice. Not sometimes. Often.

It's comparable to telling people not to worry about barb defense. There are some games where that turns out being beneficial, but usually it sets you back. Same outcome as cutting expo at 60%, especially derping that decision out w/o any regard to actual beaker rate.
 
The problem is that the 60% rule starts players off with a bad habit that they're going to have to drop. I've long contested this rule and the refusal to change it, but I can't think of a single class of player (utter newbie, played for 1 week to 1 month, more experience, etc) that would benefit from obeying it. If anything, it is going to scare rookies away from expanding onto power tiles when that should be their priority. It isn't that there are "lots of ways to play", but rather that following this particular piece of advice is a consistently bad choice. Not sometimes. Often.

It's comparable to telling people not to worry about barb defense. There are some games where that turns out being beneficial, but usually it sets you back. Same outcome as cutting expo at 60%, especially derping that decision out w/o any regard to actual beaker rate.

Sisiutil, let me chime in here as well. I followed the 60% rule for a while, largely because the rest of the guide is so well written, and the guide as a whole is so well-regarded. Skilled players point new players to your guide.

I had to get rid of this habit. I think about it this way: the article is right about the punishment the game deals out - a stalled economy - but totally wrong about the crime the game is punishing. I suspect that the 60% rule was written when people coming over from Civ 3 were attempting ICS or other hardcore settler/worker REX strategies that took every city spot in a grid. But the economic problem with SMAC or Civ 3-style ICS (other than the enforced 2-space settling limit) in Civ 4 isn't mostly its speed. The problem is how indiscriminately the REXing strategies of the old games took literally every city site and settled it. As a game Civ 4 doesn't punish rapid expansion, it punishes indiscriminate expansion.

Unfortunately for newbies the conflation works because with new players to Civ 4 rapid expansion very often is indiscriminate expansion. But the rule gives the impression that the problem is keeping a particular percentage tech rate. It does this without encouraging the player to have a look at whether the fundamentals of a game's city placement support expansion. The guide ought to encourage players to look at why this particular expansion pace works, if indeed it does, and tell them where to look to make that evaluation for themselves.
 
The problem is that the 60% rule starts players off with a bad habit that they're going to have to drop. I've long contested this rule and the refusal to change it, but I can't think of a single class of player (utter newbie, played for 1 week to 1 month, more experience, etc) that would benefit from obeying it. If anything, it is going to scare rookies away from expanding onto power tiles when that should be their priority. It isn't that there are "lots of ways to play", but rather that following this particular piece of advice is a consistently bad choice. Not sometimes. Often.

It's comparable to telling people not to worry about barb defense. There are some games where that turns out being beneficial, but usually it sets you back. Same outcome as cutting expo at 60%, especially derping that decision out w/o any regard to actual beaker rate.

People who doubt your words should do a simple experiment: Start a new game and follow the 60% rule until their 6th city is built. Then restart the game using your "binary research" concept up to the same calendar date. I did that back when I first learned from you about binary research. I've never looked back.:D
 
I just posted the latest (and most likely the last) version of the Strategy Guide--please see post #1. My thanks go out to everyone who has contributed to the discussion in this and other threads over the years!
 
Thanks for the new guide. Looks very good. I was hoping you would correct the errors in your earlier version the covers dot-mapping for city placement. I have been looking around for a dot mapping guide, and still haven't found one.
 
I'm interested in reading the new guide.

So, I downloaded the "PDF" (saved one time /opened another time) but got a grey and empty window with just a little central white window; and in said little window the writing; alas too little for me to able to read it. Maximize just maximizes the empty window.

Can someone help me, please?
My thanks in advance.
 
@Ramesses-Rules: did you mean how to put fat crosses on the dotmap (alt-X in BUG) or something more comprehensive about where to place cities?

In the earlier guide, he had a formula to calculate exactly how many farms you need to put in a city to allow the city to reach its maximum potential size. I think that is how he described it. Now, he says he made some mistakes and that is why he deleted that paragraph from subsequent versions of the guide. It is easy for the GP farm: just farm everything possible to maximize your number of specialists. But in a commerce city, is there a way to calculate how many farms to build in order to maximize the commerce? I tend to build too many cottages, and I also sometimes overcompensate and build more farms than necessary. It there a dot-mapping solution to this, or not?:)

P.S. I play Warlords on a Mac computer, so the BUG software doesn't work for me.
 
I considered that level of dot-mapping a more advanced topic than what's called for in a beginners' guide, so I removed it for that reason. (The more essential topic of city placement, which is relevant to dot-mapping, is covered.)

However, I am currently revising my Intermediate Tips & Tricks guide, so maybe I'll include a section on dot-mapping/food calculations in there.
 
I considered that level of dot-mapping a more advanced topic than what's called for in a beginners' guide, so I removed it for that reason. (The more essential topic of city placement, which is relevant to dot-mapping, is covered.)

However, I am currently revising my Intermediate Tips & Tricks guide, so maybe I'll include a section on dot-mapping/food calculations in there.

Please do that. I think it would be helpful to a lot of players.:)
 
Thanks for this guide. When I started to play Civ IV I found this guide very useful (now I am on Noble and use "winning Noble" :king:)

Very good work! :goodjob:
 
Hey Sisiuitil -

I was inspired to read through the guide on a whim just to check things, especially after Cam mentioned he got you to revise the dreaded 60% rule. I also noted that the guide in the War Academy is outdated - I requested an update.

Anyway, I find a couple of things that should be edited:

Wall Street
Wall Street multiplies commerce by 100%, so this national wonder should be built in your best commerce city. It combines best with a religious shrine, as it will multiply shrine income. In BtS, you should also found any and all corporations here, to multiply their income as well.

While the majority of the blurb is indeed correct, the bolded part is incorrect and misleading. Wall Street directly multiplies gold. Commerce is factored in depending on the slider. I'm sure you actually know this, but the wording just was never changed.

Oxford University
Oxford should be built in your top science city. It combines well with the Great Library world
wonder, and with the National Epic if you mostly want to produce Great Scientists.

Your description here is fine but incomplete IMO. Oxford can go well with TGL simply for the fact that it is often built in the capital anyway...sometimes with NE. However, I think mention of "high commerce city" is important here as well. High commerce and cottaged Bureau capital is often a good and highly effective use of Oxford. Maybe this was left out due to complexity in a beginners guide, but I think it is worth mentioning and probably not more complex than setting up for all intents and purposes, a GP Farm Ox city.
 
Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners

What I've tried to do in this file (attached) is to collect together, in one document, a summation of most of the basic strategies and tactics that I gleaned from this community. I verified the utility of each as I moved up the difficulty levels. I hope it proves useful to some. I just wanted to give something back to this community which has helped me enjoy this wonderful game far more than I could have just on my own.

Please note that the guide is not meant to incorporate all possible game strategies, but rather, just enough for a beginner to experience success in Civ IV's lower levels (Settler through Noble).

Speaking of which, this is also not meant to be a strategy guide for the higher levels. This is why it's a beginner's guide. I myself have only had my first victory on Prince at the time of posting. And from what I've seen on the board, at Monarch and above, players often vehemently disagree over strategies that work for some but not others. They also warn against relying on strategies that worked in the lower levels but are often counter-productive at Diety, Immortal, and so on. So, once you leave Noble behind, all bets are off, in my opinion.

Revised October 17th, 2011



wow this is great thanks!!:)
 
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