Hi, isa1, welcome to the forums!
Civ4 is pretty addictive, so I tend to get stuck on playing these long sessions and that makes me more impatient in terms of strategy. Do you have some kind of alert for when to stop, or do you just keep an eye on the clock/turn counter?
Regarding the strategy, it takes a bit of experience, but try to figure out the time component of the game. How much time do I need to have this kind of army, how many units not to lose the momentum, where would the opponent be at that point. Do I need a lot of siege to crack open the PRO AI with many hill cities, what is my next war going to be, how do I get there quickly, do I need a vassal to help me with tech. What will the AIs look like when I am ready to execute the plan? Is my window of opportunity narrow? Do I have the economy to go all out mid-game? Do I need to bulb something on the way? Is there a city which could generate Great Persons? What are the wonder dates (are AIs teching fast or slow), what is my chance to get some wonder? For me, there are many things happening in the future, even if they are not visible now, and I am very insecure about my vision and reiterate frequently. Also, I scout a lot to have an info to form the strategy and often need to adjust with the new info. For me that is enough to make me pause a bit, zoom out and think about the multiple paths the game could go. Also, I hate seing that the city is not working the better tile and I go through screens quickly, almost each turn, except when in war, beacuse I still get carried away.
And aahh, I'm way too nervous to actually post about my games on here (for now), but maybe I'll start writing more careful journals just for myself.
Lol, I totally relate to that. I played Civ 1 and Civ 3, since I was 12 (I was 3 when Civ 1 released), but always at a low difficulty with a lot of sandboxing. Civ 4 I played around 2007, a bit in 2009 and I was a Monarch player playing Roosevelt of Egypt at epic speed with huts. Always a Flood plains start, with some gold. And then I saw some TMIT and AZ videos and learned about the existence of civfanatics, I was really comfortable at Monarch although I saved forests for lumbermills and did not use slavery for personal beliefs. Then saw some crazy good games, saw how my games are doing nothing but wonderwhoring in up to 8 cities, made an account here and told myself that the first post will be when I beat deity as I feared that my questions would be stupid (I have learned in my life to get rid of that in the last 10 or so years). And I did do that purely by looking at
@kossin Daily Rounds plus playing a game after reading through couple of his games. I basically skipped Emperor and Immortal and lost pretty much all games for the next 2 months. And then I won. And after 2 more defeats won again. And then started winning more than losing. But those 2 moths of defeats were fueled by obsession, and I felt really stupid most of the times. If I posted the games, I would have had so much more fun earlier. You see, there was one more civfanatic at that time trying to get to Deity,
@Tachywaxon (later changed to
@Manco Capac). We had a friendly rivalry through shadowing some games, making some masochistic Deity threads to push the limits and we exchanged some private messages about the game as well. I have met actually quite a lot of friends and friendly rivals here. And it kept the whole process of learning incredibly fun. The game is supposed to be fun and things are always more fun when shared (compare watching a comedy alone to watching it with the others). So, start posting shadow games, start your own threads, see someone in your position, see someone who plays like you would like to be able to play, connect the dots, profit. And have fun!
. We've all been where you are now. Keep in mind that discussing your games with others is a great way to slow down and start analyzing the game.
I'd suggest the following recipe:
), how long until i can work another tile..or cheer workers on to finally improve this and that.
