To the Bitter End...

[Civ4Brains]

I seem to have spent a LONNNGGGG time playing my first game, which is fine by me - I enjoy taking my time, making sure I understand the various concepts at play and how my choices will affect the later game. Readily I have found myself presented with a new tech to research or a building to produce but not entirely understood its ramifications so i'll then spend ages just reading about that single topic.

I've certainly learnt a lot this way but equally, now realising how many mistakes I've made, I have the urge to start up a new game. I'm in mid renaissance?ish and only now beginning to appreciate the scale at which strategies to be executed.

I don't think I'm even doing that bad - i'm vying for 1st/2nd against the Dutch and the Americans. Roosevelt and Willem have been my neighbours and I'm still managing to fend off both their cultures and maintain a parody for tech and military despite four of my cities seemingly operating at 2/3rds potential because of shoddy placement. This also includes an on/off war with the Natives who had the gaul (I'm playing as Ramesses/Egypt so that has to be a pun!) to nab my only source of iron (don't worry though - its mine now)

My ramblings aside, I'm curious - how long did people spend on their first few games? as a 'newb' would lack of knowledge and strategy force you to end current games and start up entirely new ones? or would you doggedly persist to the bitter end?

 

[Farm Boy]

I think I started around 7 or 8 p.m. I think I won at about 4:45 a.m. On a workday. ><

 

[Ataxerxes]

I usually persisted to the end. I know a lot of others rarely finish games.

If you're still vying for first or second you might want to keep going. Early game mistakes hurt the most but there are late game mistakes to learn from too. We all have mistakes we made - just look at the "Things you thought when you were a noob". For my first dozen games I kept on trying to found one religion after another.

Renaissance is often a period for building up your infrastructure for Industrial wars. You'll learn more about siege then.

 

[Civ4Brains]

ataxerxes, i was feeling a lot more confident about victory with a plan afoot to take out the dutch to my north. Willem had just begun a war with two other civs and i thought this would be the perfect opportunity to attack - weak and exposed southern cities etc.

suddenly he captures one opposition city, they capitulate and ALL the wars end. He's even stronger than before and I had just timed the tech to build a strong, contemporary force - ah well I can at least finish off Sitting Bull with gunpowder units whilst he dreams of discovering CoL behind his defunct walls

I usually persisted to the end. I know a lot of others rarely finish games... Early game mistakes hurt the most but there are late game mistakes to learn from too

yeh, kind of my reasoning for sticking with it - learn from future mistakes.

cheers

 

[Ataxerxes]

Yuck - that hurts. If you can, Sitting Bull is a nice one to take out. He's extremely aggravating - poisons your water constantly. btw he's an odd AI - he builds a lot of units and warmongers hate his guts on sight. With his habit of building units and traits/UB he can be a bit of a tough nut.

 

[Civ4Brains]

He's extremely aggravating - poisons your water constantly

so it was him! meh, i'm about to cripple him with some of my own espionage neway - REVOLT!

wierdly, before 100 turns was up somehow every Civ was 'pleased' with him and I have no idea how he made soo many people happy soo quickly. i was hesitant to even start a war with him precisely because of this. Then i figured, long term i'm screwed without iron, DO IT!

obviously i don't have any experience to base a comparison off but it seems like he has a strong early game - loads of lvl3/4 units inc. those frickin Dog Soldiers!

 

[s.bernbaum]

For my first few games, I just tried out different features with no intention of finishing the games, which I didn't. My first full game ran for a couple of weeks, maybe an hour or two each evening, but I have a slow computer.

BTW, although you could "maintain a parody for tech and military". I suspect that you mean "parity".

 

[Ataxerxes]

so it was him! meh, i'm about to cripple him with some of my own espionage neway - REVOLT!

wierdly, before 100 turns was up somehow every Civ was 'pleased' with him and I have no idea how he made soo many people happy soo quickly. i was hesitant to even start a war with him precisely because of this. Then i figured, long term i'm screwed without iron, DO IT!

obviously i don't have any experience to base a comparison off but it seems like he has a strong early game - loads of lvl3/4 units inc. those frickin Dog Soldiers!

I suspect the reason everybody was pleased with SB (I always want to put 'o' in the middle) is because you have peaceful leaders. Different leaders have different peaceweights. This leads to peaceful leaders liking other peaceful leaders and what was earlier called "warmonger respect". Really aggres aggresive leaders have very low peaceweight and like others with low peaceweight. SB has a very high peaceweight but builds a lot of units, but doesn't declare often. Therefore, he gets along with peaceful Civs but tics off warmongers who find him hard to defeat.

I'm not fond of Dog Soldiers when I play but they make it nasty if you try to use Melee units against him. What gives me fits are the CGIII longbows from the Totem Pole. He's actuallly good to have in a game with a psycho or two. They attack him constantly and ask you to join in. The psychos then give you +3 for shared mutual military struggle and since they can't kill him he keeps them occupied. I had one OCC where I joined Ragnar in a phony war for over a thousand years against him. SB doesn't invade particularly well, but he makes it tough to invade him.

 

[Danelius90]

I've only played noble and above so my first games were unfinished because I got in a desperate situation. And other times I was actually wiped out...
definitely keep going if you can, the later era can take time to get used to, ther's lots of units and air combat took me a while to get the hang of (to know exactly whats going on and when to use them)

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

I always finish my games, call it a compulsion. It is too fun not too, win or lose.

 

[Civ4Brains]

I've only played noble and above so my first games were unfinished because I got in a desperate situation. And other times I was actually wiped out... definitely keep going if you can, the later era can take time to get used to, ther's lots of units and air combat took me a while to get the hang of (to know exactly whats going on and when to use them)

i'm playing on noble as well. keen to see how it pans out. i will persist.