Hello.
I'm one of those folks who didn't like Civ 4 at first and went back to Civ 3. Recently, I gave Civ 4 another chance and I got a much better impression of it. Anyway, I have some basic strategy questions:
1) I find war to be extremely difficult in this game. The attacker needs to have a HUGE advantage in order to just dream of considering initiating a war. I have a rather imperialistic warmongering approach and I'd prefer a somewhat shorter build-up time and higher pay off from my wars. I mean, I don't want to wait hundreds of turns and build a huge army just to conquer two lousy backwater cities. Any tips?
Hello
Brain,
War had me confused in CivIV for quite a while. It wasn't until I discovered the rock-paper-scissors aspect of war in CivIV that I started advancing off Monarch. If I know what my enemy has, and I build the proper unit to counter it, I can end up taking prime cities without losing any units. Although the previous scenario is rare, I've also learned to reduce the number of units I've lost. Siege weapons (Catapults, Trebucts, etc.) will do damage to multiple units
even if they die. This is very important because if you send in your siege weapons first, they can soften up your enemies to the point where every single one of your normal units will have a HUGE advantage.
(This is all from memory. If I fowl [sic] something up, please let me know.) Consider this scenario: You want to take a city defended by four longbowmen. These units have a strength of 6 with a 25% bonus to city defense + 25% bonuses to fortification. Unprompted that's 6 * 1.50, or 9 strength!
What should you bring to attack? Some people would say eight unpromoted swordmen would do the job. And they are correct, eight swordsmen WOULD do the job. Lets look at most likely scenario of eight swordsmen attacking the four longbowmen. Swordsmen have 8 attack with +10% city attack. That's 8*1.10 or 8.8 strength, just less than the defender's 9.
8.8 vs 9 is going to be close to 50%, probably just under it. But there will probably be some cultural defenses involved in the city you're attacking (the number under the city.) This number will increase the defenses of the defending longbowmen as well, so chances are the swordsmen will have closer to 25% (or less!) chance to kill the longbowmen.
Your first swordsman attacks. It injures longbowmen #1 to about 50% health, and your swordsman dies.
Your second swordsman attacks. The game automatically chooses the best defender (a full health longbowmen) and the same thing happens as above.
After you lose your first four swordsmen, the longbowmen have about 50% health each (about 3 health + 25% + 25%, or 4.5 + a little more due to cultural defenses) vs your swordsman's full health (8.8 after bonuses.)
The final four attacks will all be over 50% and because I'm taking the most likely scenario here, I'm going to say all four win. You take the city losing four Swordsmen, good job!
Now lets look at the scenario using four catapults and four swordsmen.
Catapults have a strength of 4, vs the longbowmen's 9 + culture, the catapults probably won't survive too well. However their strength lies in their collateral damage. When you attack with your catapult, chances are you'll not only damage the longbowman you're attacking, but you'll also damage the 3 other longbowmen garrisoned in the city.
Your first catapult attacks. 4 vs 9 + culture = probably less than 5% chance of surviving. Once your catapult dies, you damage all 4 of the longbowman!
Your second catapult attacks. 4 vs 7 this time. This will probably be around 12 or 15%, and don't expect to win. Once that one dies, you're really starting to damage the longbowmen!
By the time your 3rd Catapult attacks, your catapults may be close to, or even above a 50% chance of surviving due to the collateral damage. In this scenario, your 3rd catapult may or may not die. I'm going to say it does, because chances are it will die.
However your 4th Catapult should have no problem not dying, and will do tons of damage to the four already injured longbowmen.
By this time the longbowmen will be easily mopped up by your Swordsmen.
Now you've taken the city losing only 3 (or maybe only 2) units instead of 4. Not only that, the remaining catapult(s) now has(/have) experience and can probably can be promoted!
Rock paper scissors.
Axemen > Melee
Pikemen > Mounter
Chairots > Axemen
Swords > Cities
Siege Weapons > Stacks of units (at a loss of the siege)
*wipes brow* Yes, combat IS that complicated. And I didn't even go into why you should
not promote your swordsmen with city raider 1. But that's for another day.
2) The tech pace is unrealistically fast. By the time I build a sizable army of units with some new tech, they are already obsolete. The ancient era just passes really quickly. Now, I know about the Marathon game speed setting, but that's not really my point here. My point is that the game is biased towards tech-racing and that often leaves me broke. I'd like to play a game where I can put the tech slider lower and make more cash, while everyone's tech pace is slower.
Marathon. Marathon. Marathon.
I only play Marathon, and I'm not even a warmonger....well okay maybe my troops get bored and decide to pillage things, but that's out of my control!
Seriously though, play on Marathon. But more importantly, build your units to the Rock Paper Scissors pattern of CivIV's combat.
3) I never have enough gold for upgrading units, or anything significant for that matter. Maybe I'm not building enough cottages? So how many cottages should I build per city? What ratio of cottages to other improvements? Any other cash tips?
As far as cottages to other improvements, I cannot help you much. I play mostly Specialists economies (Build Pyramids, switch to Representation, work on Farms and set Specialists.) However you should learn where commerce is obtained without cottages.
Rivers = Commerce
Coastal tiles = Commerce
Gold, Silver, & Gems = Commerce when mined
Fur = Commerce when camped
Plantation resources = Commerce when Plantation'd
All of these tiles generate commerce without needing to wait for your cottages to grow into towns. Settling cities next to these tiles,
and working these tiles, can permit you to get a large amount of commerce very quickly.
If you try to figure everything out about CivIV right away, it will wreck your brain.
Instead learn one or two things at a time. I won a lot of my first games without doing anything super special. I had no clue what to tech for, and in some games I just teched for whatever had the least amount of turns.
To give you an idea of how many things there are to learn, I play Immortal and Deity games, and I JUST learned that Caravals can travel on the ocean without Astronomy. I also just learned that you can't found a corporation while running under state property. Also I just learned that you can have the UN and the AP running at the same time. These are all things I just learned in the last week! I also still don't know how to manage a cottage economy very well.
In many aspects of CivIV I'm still a newbie.
CivIV is HUGE. There are literally thousands of things you can do every turn. Learn the game a little at a time. If something is confusing you, drop the difficulty down 1 or 2 levels, and practice using that new strategy until you understand it. Then go back to the level you're comfortable with, and use your newfound skill there.
And good luck!
for each) so keeping 2-4 of them in the cities workable tiles is sometimes a good idea, especially if you're not on fresh water for the +2 
surplus); in addition, a riverside tile already gives you 1 
, so putting a cottage there gives you 2 
. To do this, I put watermills on them if they're riverside or workshops if they're not. 
I hope I'm not bothering you with all these really basic questions because I'll probably have more as I play along.
I think I'm going to have a lot of reading to do.
Thanks for pointing that out, slobberinbear.
Yes, even if I have "emphasize commerce" on. 
