Tips for People Who Hate Civ 4

[DrunkenSettler]

cIV is far better than any other game I have ever played. I am 33, I have had every single gaming device known to man and nothing compares to the level of addiction that this games has. And, yes. I do have a job that pays well and a wife that knows when to bring me a sandwhich after a 5 hour civ session. All of that bs aside. Here are few good tips:

1. You must explore your continent. Leaving it alone allows barbarians to set up camp. I simply train a handfull of warriors to set up shop in an effort to keep the barbarian villages from forming. Unless I want them to form. Other AI take alot of time to overtake a barbarian city. They hold the land and you dont pay the upkeep until you are good and ready to roll in with your Keshiks. Do not let them hang around too long. The axemen are a major pain.

2. Only build 2 or 3 barracks. Make sure they are in cities with a ton of hammers, add heroic epic and call it a day.

3. You must build the Parthenon. It is a good way to generate a ton of great people early.

4. Seek out the English, thay are always vulnerable to attack early. Their cities are very expensive to keep up though.

5. Establish as many religions as possible, great revenue stream coupled with happy workers along with big borders from culture.

6. Do not stretch too far for techs unless its to change a civic. The tech tree is the biggest hurdle in this game IMO. I map out electricity and rocketry for a space race vic. You need to have labs in order to win comfortably. I also recommend stretching for the space elevator. 50% less time on SS. You need to be well prepared for a space victory. More than likely Mao will beat you to the punch. I lost on Monarch with 1 turn left to build the SS engine to Mao. That is the closest I have been to winning at that level.

7. questions, comments?

 

[a4phantom]

4. Seek out the English, thay are always vulnerable to attack early. Their cities are very expensive to keep up though.

Interesting, why and why?

 

[I. Larkin]

Good article and good discussion. I'd like to pose opposite question: what valuble remained from Civ3 strategies?
Any tips about ivasion of remote continents?
I hate "relegion method", but it looks the only option after Space Ship.

 

[DrunkenSettler]

Interesting, why and why?

My experience has been that the English load up on low grade archers in an effort to protect a newer city. No walls. You can easily snap up 2 or more cities with 10 +2 swordsmen if you are lucky enough to discover Iron early. This tactic may be true for other civs as well, but especially for the English. Probably because of an AI trait. I could be wrong. Has anyone else found this to be true? As far as upkeep is concerned, the cities are usually around pop 5 to 7 with very little infrastucture. If you are attacking 10 to 12 squares away from your capital you also have the distance penalty to deal with as well.

 

[bob rulz]

I think I'm adapting quite well from Civ 3 -> to Civ 4...my first war taught mea lot about the military, although I did mix my units, because I read that Stack of Dooms or one unit type would get you obliterated. I'm still getting a hang of Great People, religion, the disorganized mess of a Civilopedia, all of the increased complexities of resources...but I'm still on my first game.

Indeed it is much different than Civ 3. I'm still on my first (full) game (I played half the tutorial mission), but I'm already getting that "one more turn" syndrome.

 

[VeXeD]

all i know is i tried to build as many settlers as posable, so before i can connect the cities threw roads, i have 10 cities, all costing me 1-5 gold per turn just because they are so far away from my main city. so with 10 cities, it is a good number of credits early on, and well lets say to cover that i had to bring my science down to 50-60%, and well. That doesn't look good in the long run!!!!!!!


This is a great articale. and it tells you how to be a good civ 4, player, basicly it says forget everything you know, and start over again!!!!! OKay well not a good player, but it gets you pointed in the right position

I keep wanting to mass-road everything for gold... ;_;

I hear ya there

 

[Mongoloid Cow]

My experience has been that the English load up on low grade archers in an effort to protect a newer city. No walls. You can easily snap up 2 or more cities with 10 +2 swordsmen if you are lucky enough to discover Iron early. This tactic may be true for other civs as well, but especially for the English. Probably because of an AI trait. I could be wrong. Has anyone else found this to be true? As far as upkeep is concerned, the cities are usually around pop 5 to 7 with very little infrastucture. If you are attacking 10 to 12 squares away from your capital you also have the distance penalty to deal with as well.

The Persians under Cyrus are another easy target. If ever he starts near me, he is the first to go. It is a pity I've never been able to build Keshiks to do the job though (I have never started near horses, and I almost always play as Genghis Khan)

 

[hollebeek]

How important is it to make sure your cities form a connected empire.

You'll get about +1 commerce per connected city (since they have
trade routes), so this is moderately important.

 

[michael4000]

This is the article I've relied on most in my transition from III to IV, and it has helped a lot. But, I got kind of carried away with Tip #1. My two cents worth for anyone else who is making the jump is that judicious expansion won't automatically destroy you.

I was so traumatized about expansion after reading this and other threads that I hardly dared build settlers in my first few games. I ended up with, well, little tiny "empires." Nothing against Luxemborg, but you feel like you're more in the game if you have a good eight to twelve cities at the end of the expansion period, instead of three. But that was probably obvious to everybody but me....

 

[a4phantom]

Is there a formula for how many cities you can have before hitting each upkeep level? In Civ3 there was the OCN, has anyone figured out the equivalents?

 

[DariusI]

Very good article!! Spot on!!!
It still feels very familiar to CivIII in some ways though. Instead of just expanding u now grow ur cities more and think about technology, trading and all, but then u still have to get ur troops stashed together and conquer some of the AI's territory. War still feels so much like CivIII. It's virtually the same. U have iron ur good. Otherwise ur in trouble.
It's just the build up to that necessary land grabbing to some territories and fundamental resources u need to give u the edge, so u can kick back and relax in later era's, that has changed.

Darius I, the Undaunted of Persia.

 

[a4phantom]

Very true, the city upkeep has eliminted the early game settler rush that made covering the map ASAP the way to win. Some things have changed about war though, mostly for the better, although artillery and therefore ships and (to a lesser extent planes) are all screwed up now when they worked very well in Civ3 Conquests. Also, now you're not screwed completely without iron because the main defensive unit, archers, requires no resources. It's just hard to go on the offense without iron. On the other hand, Civpedia says maces require iron or copper, and if that's true copper should be enough for most of your offense needs too.

 

[Zombie69]

I think it's very funny how when the game came out we thought it was so different from Civ 3, and now that we know how to play better, we find that it's pretty much the same.

1) Tip One: Expand, Expand, Expand!!!

The first thing you should do is turn your main city into a settler factory. Try to build as many cities as possible to grab as much land as possible. Be sure to build the occasional unit to defend your outermost cities.

If you don't get your third settler killed by a barbarian, you'll find that this surely puts you in a losing position by 250 AD, with your tech rate hovering around 10%, and the AI several techs ahead. Congratulations, you suck at Civ 4!

There are a few reasons why fast expansion is bad.

- Maintainance (more cities leads to a lot more maintainance!)
- Lack of improvements (if you're not generating a profit now, you can't afford to take on another city)
- Barbarians (yep, once barbarians discover archery and bronzeworking, they become a fearsome sight)

Not only that, but you don't NEED to expand like hell. Other than expansion, the following things generate money/research: religion, specialists, cottages. I won't say more than that. Having lots of cities isn't the be all and end all.

By now, people have figured out that fast expansion (sometimes through settlers but usually using axemen) is still the best way to play the early game. You just need to make sure to build enough cottages to cover the cost.

2) Tip Two: Micromanage Like Hell

As you approach the completion of a building or unit, be sure to juggle around your tiles so that way you don't overflow. Same thing with your research rate. By lowering your research rate before discovering Meditation, you can make sure that the AI discovers buddhism and you get left with jack squat.

Yep. You played with overflow, and actually paid the price.

Overflow is no longer something you have to juggle, because overflow isn't discarded, it's added to the next thing you build/research. Moreover, you WANT lots of overflow. In my experience, an AI got buddhism instead of me because I lowered my tech rate on the last turn of meditation. I reloaded, didn't lower my tech rate, and presto, my nation was the holy land of buddha.

If you still think micromanagement has been taken out of the game, you need to read the article in my sig.

3) Tip Three: Try to Grab All the Wonders

All the wonders are useful so try to grab all of them. Once you build your first, try to build all the others. Once you lose that one, take your excess cash and try to build another wonder. Once you lose that one, take your excess cash and try to build another wonder. Once your cities are without any kind of infrastucture, grab your ankles and brace yourself for Caesar to hit you with his Praetorians.

You simply cannot build all the wonders. Industrious civs will have an advantage on you. And marble/stone are also very helpful. And if you're not one of the first people to discover a tech, you can forget about even trying to build the corresponding wonder. You have to know what wonder will help you the most and plan towards it.

Not to mention that in the time it takes to build all those wonders, you could have libraries in all your cities and all your tiles improved. Or you could be the first person to have 8 horse archers. Wonders aren't the be all and end all.

If you can finish the wonder before the AI does, it's often a good idea to build it. Even a wonder whose effect is useless to you will still be helpful for the GPP it provides. This wasn't the case in Civ 3. Of course, on higher levels, you simply can't beat the AI to wonders most of the time. That doesn't make them not worth getting though, it just makes them hard to get.

4) Tip Four: Generate Lots of Cash and Buy Techs

Lower your tech rate to 0%. Absorb lots of cash. Now contact the AI. You can buy your first tech!

But wait, you need the alphabet to do that. So scratch that. Beeline to the alphabet. Now lower your tech rate to 0 and start buying those techs.

But nobody will sell you anything good, right? That's because the AI knows that their tech lead is more important than any amount of cash you can give them. They want to finish that wonder first. They want to keep you in the stone age while they get medieval on your buttocks.

The AI's tendency to hang onto its techs means that 100% research and trading for smaller techs won't work

How do you get around this?

THINK HARD. What technology do you REALLY need?

This one truly has changed. Buying techs from the AI is no longer a good strategy, they just charge too much for them. Instead, you now need to research techs that the AI won't go for, and trade for the ones who didn't research. You can still get most of your techs through trades, but now you need to offer other techs in exchange, not just gold.

As long as you play with tech trading allowed (i.e. didn't check "no tech trading" at game start), the tech to go for needs to be dictated by which tech the AI won't research more than by what you actually need. Then you have better bargaining chips. Of course, there are also techs that offer an advantage to the first one who gets them, and those should be researched whether or not the AI goes for them as well. And the same goes for military techs.

5) Tip Five: Keep the best defender in your cities, and pump out lots of the best attacker on your conquest

Swordsmen are the best attacker. And this game is exactly like Civ 3 -- your best defence is a good spearman. Keep two or three spearmen in each city, and build a stack of swordsmen and go after the AI.

Alright, so you just found out that your spearmen and swordsmen are incredibly vulnerable to axemen. Axemen have 5 strength to a swordsman's 6, but they gain huge bonuses against other melee units.

Building only one unit type is a surefire way to get yourself killed. Because that means the enemy only has to build one unit type to stop you. And the defender has a huge advantage from tile bonuses, city bonuses, and getting to 'choose' the ideal defender against whatever attacker you use. Attackers need to be SMART.

Read the manual. Really look at those units. Try to figure out the best counter for each one. And there IS a counter for each one. The line between offense and defence is blurred, too. Consider a defensive catapult waiting behind your city walls. Consider an offensive spearmen, to provide your marauding swordsmen a defence against war elephants. The more you mix your units, the harder it is for your opponent to deal with your case.

And a stack of units is expensive. You can't just keep them on the shelf. You have to use em.

A stack of nothing but axemen is still the best way to attack early in the game. A single archer (or if you don't have archery, a single axeman) is the best way to defend most cities. Nothing has changed.

6) Tip Six: Play the same way every game

Now that you've read these tips, you know a surefire to win every single Civ 4 game. A strategy that always works.

And that's "adapt". You need to be responsive to the situation on the ground, or else you're about as smart as a speak & spell.

Until they truly fix cottage spamming and the financial trait, you can indeed play every game the same way and win, provided you make sure to pick a financial leader.

A new game always seems to have more diverse strategies. This remains true until people figure out which strategy is the best (which sometimes takes a while). After that, the game doesn't seem so diverse anymore.

 

[Zombie69]

And as for the two posters above me, who decided to revive this thread (for our amusement perhaps), there's one thing that you need to learn. Iron is not crucial in the early game, not even close. Copper is. And the best unit to attack with isn't swordsmen, it's axemen. You should attack your first victim long before iron working is even discovered.

 

[DariusI]

And as for the two posters above me, who decided to revive this thread (for our amusement perhaps), there's one thing that you need to learn. Iron is not crucial in the early game, not even close. Copper is. And the best unit to attack with isn't swordsmen, it's axemen. You should attack your first victim long before iron working is even discovered.

Lol, I know Swordsmen are only good (and real good at that) to siege cities.
And I completely disagree with u. Iron gives an amazing advantage over your opponents!!
And about reviving the thread. What's wrong with that? Stop bugging other people for silly things like this plz! It's really annoying.
Finally, about attacking long before u discover iron... That's far from always possible. The AI is often just simply faster at building an army than u (try to build more units than AI at deity lol). U need to wait for the right moment to attack, and consider whether u really want to attack ur AI opponent if he's got a much stronger military. Strong units like swordsmen and axemen with the bulk of ur army should be able to crush ur AI opponents however. But that's a different discussion about when u best go to war and whether just to occupy/rase a couple of cities or go for complete annihilation. But it all just depends on the circumstances. There's no golden rule there!

Darius I, the Undaunted of Persia.

 

[Kalleyao]

Lol, I know Swordsmen are only good (and real good at that) to siege cities.
And I completely disagree with u. Iron gives an amazing advantage over your opponents!!
And about reviving the thread. What's wrong with that? Stop bugging other people for silly things like this plz! It's really annoying.
Finally, about attacking long before u discover iron... That's far from always possible. The AI is often just simply faster at building an army than u (try to build more units than AI at deity lol). U need to wait for the right moment to attack, and consider whether u really want to attack ur AI opponent if he's got a much stronger military.

I agree with your disagree, DariusI and disagree with zombie as usual. In all of my game ALL!!!, Iron has been a must for me. Copper is a resource for those who fail to hook Iron. (In the ealy game.)

 

[DariusI]

Very true, the city upkeep has eliminted the early game settler rush that made covering the map ASAP the way to win. Some things have changed about war though, mostly for the better, although artillery and therefore ships and (to a lesser extent planes) are all screwed up now when they worked very well in Civ3 Conquests. Also, now you're not screwed completely without iron because the main defensive unit, archers, requires no resources. It's just hard to go on the offense without iron. On the other hand, Civpedia says maces require iron or copper, and if that's true copper should be enough for most of your offense needs too.

Archers should in no case be the main defenders: reason: they suck!! No city can survive a serious pounding of a stash of swordsmen if defended with 'archers'. Besides, you should defend forwards; in other words let your attacking units defend ur cities by attacking invaders in the mainland. That way u don't even need defensive units; giving u an army capable of both (aggressive) defence, offence and counter-attack!! Don't cram in your cities, unless no other option, (cause ur flooded by enemy troops and defending resources, hamlets,... would leave ur city unprotected).
--> Defend your borders rather than ur cities!! lol Otherwise you'll be going back to the Dark Ages due to total erasure of ur economy. That is ideally of course.
And I agree with u agreeing my disagree Kalleyao. Iron is simply superior to copper. Take a look at ancient history for that matter.

Darius I, the Undaunted of Persia.

 

[Zombie69]

Finally, about attacking long before u discover iron... That's far from always possible. The AI is often just simply faster at building an army than u (try to build more units than AI at deity lol). U need to wait for the right moment to attack, and consider whether u really want to attack ur AI opponent if he's got a much stronger military. Strong units like swordsmen and axemen with the bulk of ur army should be able to crush ur AI opponents however.

I actually do try, and indeed succeed, in attacking the AI with axemen at Deity. Were i to wait for swordsmen, i couldn't succeed, because the AI would be too powerful by then and the cultural bonus of the cities would be too much to overcome.

I used to be like you and think that swordsmen are better city attackers then axemen, but i saw the light a long time ago.

Axemen are better because they come sooner, so you're facing fewer archers, and very little or no culture.

How do you manage to make more axemen than the AI can make archers to defend? Easy, it's called pop rushing and chop rushing. The AI doesn't know how to do either.

There are countless good strategy articles in these forums that will confirm this if you still don't believe me. Just look around a bit.

 

[DariusI]

I actually do try, and indeed succeed, in attacking the AI with axemen at Deity. Were i to wait for swordsmen, i couldn't succeed, because the AI would be too powerful by then and the cultural bonus of the cities would be too much to overcome.

I used to be like you and think that swordsmen are better city attackers then axemen, but i saw the light a long time ago.

Axemen are better because they come sooner, so you're facing fewer archers, and very little or no culture.

How do you manage to make more axemen than the AI can make archers to defend? Easy, it's called pop rushing and chop rushing. The AI doesn't know how to do either.

There are countless good strategy articles in these forums that will confirm this if you still don't believe me. Just look around a bit.

Ever heard of selective (or more precisely simply mis-reading?!?)
I've already said that I know Axemen are better for open attack on ur opponent.
Next time u feel a 'smart' comment coming... please make sure it's got anything to do with what the other person just said and it's not completely besides the point!
So... about pop-rushing and chop rushing and... we all know about that already. I'm not gonna tell u again what I was talking about earlier... just learn to read!

Edit: Besides, if ur opponent only has archers (as his best unit) swordsmen "are" better than axemen!!

Darius I, the Undaunted of Persia.

 

[Zombie69]

I'm not talking about "open attacks", i'm talking about attacking cities that have nothing but archers. Axemen are better than swordsmen at this task, because you can get them faster, and attack a city with 2 archers and zero culture instead of a city with 4 archers and 40% cultural bonus.

Swordsman with CR1 vs archer with CG1 and 40% cultural bonus, fortified for 5 turns : 6.0 vs 6.15

Axeman with CR1 vs archer with CG1 and 0% cultural bonus, fortified for 5 turns : 5.0 vs 5.25

The odds are only slightly lower for the axeman, but the axeman costs less, and you're facing fewer archers.

It's much easier to conquer a civ with axemen than with swordsmen.

And since waiting for swordsmen means that the AI is sure to have axemen by the time you arrive, this makes it even worse for swordsmen and is one more reason to attack earlier and with only axemen.