Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners

I'm gonna have a new lookthrough now that 4.1 is out (since february lol) since I last read this guide at 3.2 or something. I'm exited!
 
Thanks for the great tips! I really undervalued both Religion and Culture before, but now got to play a game where I literally didn't get into a single fight (save for Barbarians) - founded and spread a religion, got lots of Commerce and Culture out of it, used some food-specializing cities to make Great Artists, and won with legendary cities. I never knew it was such fun to flip nearby opposing cities with massive amounts of Culture...



EDIT: Also, I've tried out an aggressive approach before, and never got ro a relevant position despite military victories. After reading the guide, I tried again, and by being prepared for the economic downturn and other stuff, got Augustus Cesar rankings after a domination win (on Prince). I never got more than 30% research though for almost all of the game due to their being almost no trade (didn't have much to trade with on the continent I conquered), but it definitely was worth it for all the land I captured. Maybe the amount of trade possible could enter into the equation somehow...
 
"Many players prefer to build a Warrior (or Scout, if you start with Hunting) first, timing the
build by changing the tile worked by the capital’s first citizen so that the unit is finished on the same
turn that the city grows to size 2."

Citizens work? Please explain this, as I have no idea what it means. ;_;
 
Wveth said:
"Many players prefer to build a Warrior (or Scout, if you start with Hunting) first, timing the
build by changing the tile worked by the capital’s first citizen so that the unit is finished on the same
turn that the city grows to size 2."

Citizens work? Please explain this, as I have no idea what it means. ;_;
Click to expand...
You assign a city's population to work certain tiles in the city screen. You can assign citizens to low food/high production tiles, or vice-versa, to emphasize production or growth.
 
I've repeatedly heard mention of a mixed (cottage and specialist) economy. However, it seems to me that choosing either one or the other could be valuable because certain civics (i.e. representation) give bonuses to either cottage-based production or to specialists, and if you only had one type of economy you would be able to choose those that profit your whole empire and not only a part of it. The same is true for certain techs (I think Printing Press for cottages, or Biology for specialists). Is there something I'm overlooking?
 
georgjorge said:
I've repeatedly heard mention of a mixed (cottage and specialist) economy. However, it seems to me that choosing either one or the other could be valuable because certain civics (i.e. representation) give bonuses to either cottage-based production or to specialists, and if you only had one type of economy you would be able to choose those that profit your whole empire and not only a part of it. The same is true for certain techs (I think Printing Press for cottages, or Biology for specialists). Is there something I'm overlooking?
Click to expand...
First off, let me say that an in-depth discussion of cottage versus specialist economies and their variants is off-topic in a "beginners" thread; on the lower difficulty levels and when you're new to the game, you're best off sticking to the straightforward cottage economy.

But to answer your question, you are, for the most part, correct. Just as specializing a city helps you prioritize its builds and tile improvements, focusing on one type of economy similarly helps you prioritize technologies to research and choose civics to run.

That being said, the idea of a hybrid economy is, frankly, that the terrain will not lend itself to just one type of city anyway, so you might as well diversify. In addition, techs and civics have multiple benefits. For example, in the early game especially (assuming you own the Pyramids), Representation not only boosts the research output of every specialist. It also aids the cottage economy by raising the happy cap in your five biggest cities, allowing you to grow those cities larger and work more cottages. Printing Press increases the output of mature cottages, but it also leads to Reliable Parts and Rifling, and most specialist economies benefit from warmongering, so... you get the picture.
 
You write about specialized cities, but would it be a viable idea to make a specialized Espionage city in the mid-game once the relevant buildings are discovered, since they have all percentage multipliers? Probably a variation of a GP farm with all the espionage buildings, the Yard, and as much Spy specialists as possible...
 
georgjorge said:
You write about specialized cities, but would it be a viable idea to make a specialized Espionage city in the mid-game once the relevant buildings are discovered, since they have all percentage multipliers? Probably a variation of a GP farm with all the espionage buildings, the Yard, and as much Spy specialists as possible...
Click to expand...
That's a good point. I sometimes create an espionage city, especially if I capture an enemy city with Scotland Yard and a decent food supply. I may add that as another city specialization type to the next version of the guide. Thanks!
 
Hello everyone! This is my first post here. Long time ago I played Civilization 2 on Play Station and found it to be one of the most addictive games ever, so recently i bought Civilization 4 for PC and wasn't doing very well at it (everything past noble level was giving me a hard time), so i decide to search the web for a quick strategy guide. Couple of days ago i found civfanatics and after joining the forums and giving them a quick search i stumbled across Sisiutil's guide. Gotta say it's an excellent guide, it's already improved my gameplay. I just wanna thank Sisiutil for taking the time to make this guide.
 
Just chiming in to say that the guide really helped me when I started playing about a month ago. The fact that it's been updated with later expansions and versions has made it extremely useful.

If I had to make a suggestion, it would be to give a little more info on the victory conditions, esp. Diplomatic. That's probably the most confusing for new players (and even some non-so-new players!). Even basic info like what % of votes you need, the fact that you can't yourself comprise all the necessary votes, etc. Actually, I'm still not sure if vassals count in that last restriction.

Although, now that I think about it, perhaps Diplomatic victories are not for new players at all!
 
Thanks for taking the time to make this great guide. Was feeling a bit overwhelmed until I read this (well...I think I'm still overwhelmed lol, still loving the game though).
 
Hey, thanks a whole lot for the guide. I'm still trying to understand how some of the game mechanics function, so forgive me for posting in a somewhat unstructured manner (and for not starting a noob thread of my own, because I figured my questions would be better answered here...).

One thing that's not entirely clear is the number of cities. You say "four to six", but that's not what I saw during my first test campaign.

Example: just tried a campaign using the Next War Epic scenario (which allows you ultimately to get future tech, which is sort of what I was looking forward to). Speed at Epic, huge size Continents map. A lot of other civilizations, don't remember how many, I set them at random. I was on Noble (since I suppose it's equivalent to "Normal"). Started as Peter the Great/Russia. My general goal is to grab territory, develop it, playing defensively, and most importantly, beat the other civilisations in research. I'll start a war when I get to a distinctly superior position, and I don't care about time or score or anything.

So, the result (more or less as expected): I'm one of the lowest ranked nations, and in the 18th century, I'm still totally medieval. The first nation outranks me by a factor of three, and all nations seem to have 10 to 15 cities, whereas I have 4. Needless to say, they have built all wonders before me (even though I somehow managed to get the Mausoleum, hah).
--------------
Now, because I didn't know about cottage spam and thus have less commerce, I haven't had the gold to develop research properly. Even so, it seems that the AI just... puts them more closely together or something? I thought I had to put them pretty far apart, so that they'd eventually grow and take the land between them.
Is there a city distance rule? I think my cities have around 10 or more tiles between them, which may be too much?..

Also, on workers... is there some kind of shortcut or notification that tells you which workers aren't doing anything? Because someone told me to leave them all on auto, otherwise I'd get a headache micro-ing them in a couple of hours... they seemed to be doing all right on their own, though I have guessed that I'm losing any benefits of specialisation.

Do I get it right that while constructing wonders (for example, going for the Pyramids early on) I need to set workers to chop down trees around the city?

Is there a way to fight overpopulation? Once my cities get to ten-twelve they start starving or stagnating, and being unhappy. That with all the happiness buildings (Colosseum, Theatre, Temple, etc.).
I haven't really gotten into making a Great people cloning facility -er, city, but it looks like they do help a lot, don't they...

On fighting them culturally: I was still able to hold off the cultural expansion of some of the more intrusive neighbours, but damn, it takes a lot.

Since we're talking about culture, I've got a question on religion: is it normal that everybody seems to be the same? well, more or less everybody. A couple civs still hold to their religion, but otherwise, everybody in the beginning adopted Hinduism, and that was the end of it.

A final question on Diplomacy. When do defensive pacts become available?
 
Welcome to CFC, Mister V!

:beer:

Oh boy, what a lot to tackle! Let's get started...

First off, the "60% rule" states that you expand until you must place the research slider below 60% to break even, which usually happens in the early game after you've founded around 4 to 6 cities. But if you look at the guide again, it clearly states that once the slider inches up past 60% again, it's time to expand and either found more cities peacefully if land is still available, or through war if it's not. It's extremely difficult to win the game with just 4 cities.

Don't be afraid to have cities overlap. Found cities not based upon their distance from one another but based upon the tiles, especially the resources, that they can claim. Founding early cities too far apart increases your maintenance costs at the worst time in the game to do that, because you have so few methods of offsetting it.

DO NOT AUTOMATE WORKERS. They will not improve tiles in an optimal way--far from it. In particular, one of the keys to the game is city specialization, which requires you to improve tiles around the city to support the chosen speciality (farms for a GP farm; cottages for a commerce city; farms, mines, watermills, and workshops for a production city). You need to micromanage them, sorry. Live with it.

You don't always have to chop forests to finish a wonder, but it certainly helps, especially for the early wonders where competition is more fierce. Try to combine chopping with other game elements that multiply the hammers from losing that forest (e.g. running Organized Religion with the state religion present in the wonder city, possessing the wonder's accelerating resource such as marble or stone, having a forge in the wonder city, having knowledge of mathematics, etc.).

Refer to the guide's section on happiness (and health) for additional ways to increase your cities' caps in these areas. Also have a look at Cabert's excellent articles on these topics in the War Academy (Ways into Happiness, Ways into Health).

GP are enormously helpful, especially for "lightbulbing" technologies, but they have other uses as well, yes. I usually want one of my first cities, either founded or captured in an early rush, to become a GP farm ASAP.

The best way to fight culture is to obliterate it, i.e. capture or raze the city that's giving you grief.

The religious situation will depend on a number of factors, but especially on the map. If the map gives you more landmasses separated by ocean, you can usually expect to see more of a mixed bag in this area as each continent founds a religion and has it spread. With fewer landmasses, usually one of the earliest religions spreads like wildfire and dominates.

DPs become available with Military Tradition, IIRC.
 
Thanks for the welcome and the quick reply - this community is the first thing that pops up in searches, and rightly so.

So as a general rule, I should start with cities close together? I didn't really have any economic problems, in fact, I always kept my research at or over 80%, even despite city maintenance. That said, I didn't engage in any wars, and had almost no barbarian encounters.

And on building order - should my first city be pumping out only settlers then? Because you mention build orders, but I saw that people prefer different ones. Oh well. I guess it's time to experiment.

As to wonders, I figured I'd go for the Pyramids next time to get Representation, that should help a lot, so I guess that means some deforestation is in order. Thanks.

Thank you again for pointing to the articles. Didn't have any problems with Health though, maybe because I had Expansionist and tried to build aqueducts early.

On a final note, is it okay to continue asking questions (pertaining to the guide, of course) here, or should I go make another thread instead of hogging this one?
 
One of the most common pieces of good advice you will receive around here is "play the map". This dictates a number of things, and that includes the founding of cities. If you can found 6 decent cities near one another, each with food and other resources but a few to several tiles of overlap, do so. But if the map dictates that your cities must be further apart to be optimal, then do that. There are trade-offs to each approach.

"Play the map" also dictates your choice of wonders to pursue. Building the Pyramids is an attractive early goal in order to run representation many, many turns earlier than that is normally possible. However, consider the following:

  1. Are there sufficient city sites available to you with a decent potential food supply in order to run specialists? If you find yourself in an area with lots of hills and plains and sparse food resources and supplies of fresh water, you may not be able to run sufficient specialists to properly leverage representation.
  2. Do you have a source of stone? The Pyramids are appallingly expensive at a time when your production is extremely low. Stone accelerates the build and makes the hammer cost (slightly) more tolerable.
  3. Do you have plenty of forests around the intended Pyramid city? Chopping, as you noted, will accelerate the build considerably. If you have few forests, your run for the Pyramids may be extremely dicey--even if you have stone. The AI is usually quite fond of this wonder.
  4. Do you have a nearby neighbour with good cities (esp. a holy city and/or wonders) on good land? Do you have a source of copper while his cities are defended by an archer or two? Screw the 'mids. Spend the hammers on axes and kill, baby, kill.
Similar considerations should come into play for all wonders. Are most of your cities landlocked, inland centres on a large continent? Then why would you bother building the Great Lighthouse or the Colossus? Are you planning on pursuing a peaceful endgame and victory condition such as cultural or space race? Then why bother building the Pentagon? And so on.

Everybody has a different opinion on initial build orders. Again, I would say, play the map and, in addition, read up on threads around here on why people recommend the build orders that they do. Use those build orders that make sense for the situation in which you find yourself.

Health problems don't usually become an issue until much later in the game, but they can become an issue, preventing you from growing your city quickly enough to work additional tiles. If ignored, it can come back to haunt you.

You can keep posting here, however this thread has been relatively inactive for some time and I suspect some people have unsubscribed from it, so you might get more responses if you post in an existing, active thread (such as the "Condensed tips" thread in this forum), or start a new one. Your choice.
 
On "playing the map", I gathered as much, although the reasoning behind the article on how to calculate city specialisation in the War Academy baffles me, to be honest.

My capital, btw, is my GP farm and science city, gives me +66/turn to GP birth (scientist mostly), which is, I guess... not that bad. I've followed the guide, anyway.

I've restarted a couple of times, and found that I needed to get rid of some options to enjoy the game for now. I don't think I'm doing too bad, it's just that the AI seems to be completely reckless at placing cities. Fractal map, me and Asoka on a big island sort of thing - I'd prefer to be alone, but I didn't find a way to change starting positions. I don't think I'm doing too bad: I got the less rich part of the island right now, in the 1200s, I have 5 cities and building musketmen, while he has more that ten - mostly because he has a bigger part of the island, and his city placement policies are just crazy, he literally put two on a bare coast near me, and another one on a one-tile island. So, in short, I'm tailing him by something like 600 points to 750.
To be fair, both our militaries are pretty weak, but I'm kind of thinking that it may soon be time for my first war... just need to figure out how to deal with two unhappy citizens in my capital (whip 'em?). But then war seems to be a big deal by itself, especially with revolts and whatnot, I have to prepare well for that, too. My war habits are dictated by the Total War series, and I'm a bit cautious of starting something like that here, because it simply might be too reckless.

The guide does not mention the unit upkeep (I've searched). I've read the article in War Academy though, and I was just wondering how would I calculate the maximum number of units I can operate outside of my cultural borders (that article just says I have to pay 50% more for them, I suppose from a base of one gold per unit?). I would prefer to do one massive assault and get the first five cities that are very close to my borders in the first go.
 
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