The " When I was a Newbie I... " Thread.

[Genv [FP]]

When I was a newbie I...

...Thought that each cottage built no matter where gave money to your treasury

.... Couldn't understand how people could keep cities happy

.... Thought that Whipping was useless

.... Wondered which religion gave me the most benefit

.... Thought that Commerce = Gold

....Thought that going to war was fairly useless

.....Thought that combat was biased towards the defender



Now start posting people, and don't be too ashamed to tell us

 

[Jaybe]

I was playing as Rome, and had no iron. Then I got hemmed in and had no place to expand. Desperate, I started building mines on every hill (outside my city radii), hoping that iron would appear. It never did happen, and then I learned that resources only "magically" appeared on WORKED mines.

That was 3 years ago. I don't remember anything else at the moment.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I read the forums quite fervently, and even started reading them before xmas when I got the game.

When I started playing the glaring problem came in military and cities for me. I didn't make enough of either.

One time on warlord I was pushing a space race victory when I got declared on by an AI with knights and cavalry, in #'s that I couldn't properly defend against. It was the 2nd or 3rd time it happened. That really changed me. I went from a builder type to one of the most vicious-minded warmongers around. Once I registered on the forums pretty much ALL of my development until emperor was military skill, not how to manage an empire (on emperor I finally HAD to learn to manage military). It was useful to have a goal - maxing the production and usage of units will force a lot of things, like proper whipping, city specialization, and so on.

These days I'm quite often poor in tech, killing the more advanced AI with tons of units .

 

[Siesta Guru]

Ah the real newb days are a while ago.

- I had no clue what commerce, research, gold, culture, happiness, or the research silder did, i just randomly got techs (i picked the computers choice ofcourse) and build buildings with nice numbers on them (uuh +25% gold i guess thats nice, lets build that)
- I thought cottages looked stupid and since i had no clue about commerce i just spammed farms everywhere
- A improvement on the previous point for me was finding the automate worker button, this actually boosted my game by alot.
- I was completely confused by the games combat mechanics and never found the percentage odds, when i build my first war elephants i thought they would singlehandedly destroy the enemy, my elephants died after killing only 1 spear/2 axes and for a very very long time i refused to build war elephants because of this.
I almost stopped playing because i thought that no matter how often i tried, 7 musketman wouldnt kill 4 longbowman (in a 60/80% defense city on a hill while they likely gathered a few promotions), this didnt seem fair to met at all. Untill this day i have a deep hatred towards longbowman, games became so much mroe fun when i modded some of that city defense out.

- Once i figured out how to found religions (without knowing what they did) i always went for the religon techs at the start of the game.

- Genghis kahn seemed like the strongest military leader based on history to me, "aggresive" and "expansive" sounded like things i wanted to be, but i had no clue what those things actually ment.

- Settlers seemed like the best thing to build at the start of the game, i often build 4 of these before building anything else, using my lone warrior as a escort to places that seemed nice (as in, a blue ring with pretty lands around it).

- Dont even get me started on whipping, BFCs, traderoutes, maintenance or relations, it may have taken me over 3 weeks of playing before noticing things like that existed.


It shouldnt surprise you that i had difficultys beating the lowest difficulty level (settler wasnt it?).

Now those were truely my newb days.

 

[Matthew5117]

-Thought that in order to make improvements like cottages and farms to work, I had to connect them to the city with roads. So, back then, a road was basically on every single tile of my.

 

[Orzio]

- I never know about siege or bomardment for a long time. Imagine trying to take a city with longbows and say 75% culture defense without using siege. Lets just say I always thoth it was imposibol to take cities. But I did know about nukes so my idea for my first games was play until I got nukes nuke a city with 1 or 2 nukes then take it. Fun times

 

[Wolfshanze]

.... Thought that Whipping was useless

Yeah... I was like "what's slavery good for"??!!??

Now every game goes into the 20th century and I'm still whipping my slaves!

 

[Kiwi Tyrant]

After playing the new Civ4 a couple of times I found this little button that allowed me to access my civic's and actually change them to other one's!

.....until I bothered to read the manual closely, I simply tried to change to the civic's at the bottom of the list, 'cause I thought these must be the ultimate one's to go for!

Ahh, a mysterious time of discovering the unknown.......sort of like fog busting.

 

[Ormur]

I came from civ 3 and saw no use for commerce (that came from roads didn't it). I never built cottages and put workshops over the ones I conquered. I didn't run specialists either I just wanted hammers, lots of them, worked fine on settler.

I never whipped either and built every building in every city.

 

[r_rolo1]

I came from civ 3 and saw no use for commerce (that came from roads didn't it). I never built cottages and put workshops over the ones I conquered. I didn't run specialists either I just wanted hammers, lots of them, worked fine on settler

Been there, done that. And if I don't pay attention, sometimes i still go to "farm green, mine yellow" mode

 

[Wolfshanze]

When I was a newbie...

I played default Civ4 without any mod to make it more the way I enjoy it.

 

[ICNP]

War was something that took 100 years to prepare for. My first game I played as Toku (Vanilla) and spent the entire game at peace with the French. I got bored with having no goal so I decided to attack his knights with Bombers. I got a domination victory for my first two games.

I remember seeing the Granary and thinking it was some strange building.
Oh and Automated Workers? Loved those things

 

[Turquoiside]

I was playing as Rome, and had no iron. Then I got hemmed in and had no place to expand. Desperate, I started building mines on every hill (outside my city radii), hoping that iron would appear. It never did happen, and then I learned that resources only "magically" appeared on WORKED mines.

That was 3 years ago. I don't remember anything else at the moment.

Wait, new resources only appear on worked squares?!? I suppose I would'nt notice seeing as I don't usually need to hope for a resource from a mine

After reading some of these, just can't understand how you can get confused about diplomacy. It is way too simple, and thankfully modded But I wasn't that great either

Yeah, I remember when I was confused that I was losing in tech when I had two whole cities.

I beelined Polytheism without a real plan. ( Now I beeline it with a plan for a CoL, Theology combo, much nicer)

I almost quit when Boudica Dow'D my army of 7 warriors and 6 archers and I couldn't comprehend why she had such a huge army.

I thought 'Mids was useless (Still do actually)

 

[Jaybe]

Wai, resources only appear on worked squares?!? I suppose I would'nt notice seeing as I don't usually need to hope for a resource from a mine

NEW SOURCES of resources, which have ALREADY been revealed, only appear on worked mines. E.g., when you are about to get industrialism you might discover a new source of gold or iron on one of your worked mines.

 

[digitCruncher]

* I thought 3 workers could do all the working I would ever need... occasionally, if I over expanded, I would build 5 (SHOCKING!!)
* I couldn't understand why the AI would constantly harrass me. Especially when I was so weak, with 1 archer for each city...
* I tried to keep the unit count so low that I woudn't pay any unit upkeep on them
* I always adopted Her. Rule / Fuedalism / Caste System / Free Market / Org Religion ASAP, only switching to Universal Sufferage, Emancipation, and Free Speech near the end of the game. I never used any other civics.
* Always bee-lined Calvalry (of course... it was Vanilla), before doing any wars. I never warred before Military Tradition, and it was a pure Calvalry charge...

 

[DMOC]

I never declared war....

 

[Kevie]

-auto-worker turned on.
-overlapping BFC with other BFC was a BIG NO NO
-didnt get the dumb wonders made me quit
-settler settlings, enough said
-enjoyed watching marines and tanks roll over longbows...
-always sticking to america.
-traded iron for pig. never realized how important iron, bronze resources were.
-3 cities, sometimes 4, was good enough
-below 60% science slider was crippling
-2 military units per city was 'enough' for defense
-time victories was the only time i won
-getting stuck at dan q ranking

thats all i can think of for now...

 

[GooglyBoogly]

-Didnt know what resources did
-couldn't understand that it required technology to harvest sugar
-kept looking for the barbarian leader to ransom for gold, but couldn't find any
- ICSed like mad and wondered why my economy crashed
- Couldn't understand why I was unable to trade techs right from the start
- Kept building production low to 'reduce maintainence'
- Kept units away from the shore to prevent attacks from passing ships
- Chose not to attack a lone worker on a hill with a warrior because I would probably lose the battle
- Kept looking for the 'build town' button - Why would I want a hamlet when a town gives so much more?
- Had no idea why some of my cities had fresh water, while others didnt
- Held off crushing a civ because I could get all of their techs, then getting really mad when they wouldn't give me everything they had

 

[Kranden]

Building or capturing every city I possibly could regardless of how well my economy could support it (also not burning down useless cities)

Never giving in when rival leaders made demands

trying to wonder rush and Warmonger at the same time

Not Using Slavery

Trying to found early religions on harder difficulties (not worth it in most cases. much easier to take one from a neighbor before he expands it)

Not building Praetorians.

 

[BurnEmDown]

Switched civics whenever I got the techs for them, thought it was an all-time bonus with little penalties ("oh boy! 50% faster workers for only medium upkeep! yeah I'll switch to serfdom!")
Only went to war with civs my civ went to war with in RL (mongolia -> china, england -> america, persia-> greece, etc)