Top 5 advice

[Madbone1]

Hi

I've played Civ since Sid's good old number 1 and the way through the games until Conquest.

I consider myself a semi expert but sometimes I might get stuck with doing things the same way over and over again through my games.

Which actually leads to my question. If you were to give 5 pieces of advice to a newbie Conquest/Civ player in order to deleted what would they be ?

Here's mine (all goes for huge maps):

1. Expand. In my mind the single most important thing is Expansion and building plenty of cities as fast as possible.

2. Wonders. Build many wonders and know which to build and which you can do without. They can offer you a competitive edge.

3. Diplomacy. Especially at higher difficulties I find this important. Put up with the annoying neighbours for as long as necessary. Try establishing some trade between the civs, trading excess luxuries, techs etc to give you extra income.

4. Government. Go for Republic as soon as possible (first research priority). Then Democracy.

5. Research is the key. Build libraries before marketplaces, universities before bank etc. From late middelages and onwards research time for new techs should not exceed the fastest research rate of 4 turns too often.

Let me hear yours. Any good input ? Am I way off ?

Don't use foul language, even bleeped - also, this would best belong in Strategies & Tips. Moved.

 

[Darkness]

Top5:

1 - Never automate workers

2 - Build enough workers

3 - Food is king in the early stages of the game

4 - The luxury slider is better then entertainers to prevent unhappyness through your entire empire....

5 - Trade, trade, trade!!!!

 

[Hawkster]

ok assuming for newbies

1.Don't neglect military - or the AI will attack - even if you are playing peacful and nice

2.Don't worry about wonders - you don't actually need them to get anyewhere

3.Workers are your best friends - make sure you have pleanty of them

4.Roads,roads,roads and more roads - get the commerce going - add in markets then banks

5.Read the war academy articles especially Crackers opening play sequences and Bamspeedy's diety settlers (then reread them) - and have a look at the succession games forum.

 

[Sun]

1- if you don't have granary available than make it your first research priority and next built one in every city designated as settler-producing cities

2- have one or two cities produce a barrack and produce veteran units, spearman first and later horseman. having something of an army is the best way to prevent war, which you rarely need early in the game when expansion is your main priority. exception would be when you no longer can expand and need to go destroy another civ just to create some 'lebensraum'

3- start working on infrastructure and upgrading tiles with mines asap. not only does this get you more $$, it also provides faster unit movements and higher production. so get yourself a fair share of workers, also... do yourself a pleasure and team them up. and ALWAYS micromanage!!

4- if possible get Great Library, for me only possible up to monarch level, emperor rarely lets me get a wonder and i learned that at that level the only way to win is through warmongering.

5- when you find yourself getting your ass kicked and you are ready to scream with frustration, remind yourself its only a game

 

[Arathorn]

1 - Expand first -- you need to have land to develop it

2 - WORKERS -- build twice as many as you think you need and use them intelligently

3 - Have each city focus on its strengths -- lots of shields but low food builds military. Lots of food low shields builds workers/settlers, etc.

4 - Diplomacy -- TRADE TRADE TRADE. Get what you need (resources and LUXURIES!), gold, war allies, etc. from the AIs. Don't be too isolationist,

5 - Eschew specialists -- if you find a city needs a specialist, consider the lux slider or popping a worker out of the city or finding happiness with a building. Taxmen/scientists/entertainers are a drain on your civ, especially if they're near your core. This is triply true in the early game.

Those are my 5, but others have had good ones, too. And some have listed false things, but that's OK, too. You can learn from other's misperceptions (e.g. you can win on emperor and deity without warmongering fairly easily. Wonders are entirely optional and building many is NOT necessary. Research before cash is not the only good tactic.)

Arathorn

 

[Sun]

Originally posted by Arathorn
And some have listed false things, but that's OK, too. You can learn from other's misperceptions (e.g. you can win on emperor and deity without warmongering fairly easily.
Arathorn

Either you are a really cool guy or just plain really cool or just a cool guy.

Moderator Action: Starting flamewars is not acceptable on this forum. Keep the tone down.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

I NEVER said that you can't win on emperor and deity without warmongering. Nor did anyone else.

So, that makes you into one who presents a false fact. Congratulations!

 

[Arathorn]

i learned that at that level the only way to win is through warmongering

Means what to you? For those of us well-versed in the English language, only means "exclusively or solely". When you claim that the only way to win at that level [Emperor] is through warmongering, you are indeed saying that you can't win without warmongering.

In logic terms, you're claiming
win at Emperor -> warmongering used (some parsing required)
That is equivalent to
no warmongering used -> no win at Emperor (contrapositive)

Looks pretty clear to me.

Arathorn

 

[HalfBadger]

I'm a fairly new player to Civ3, still playing Civ3: PTW, Have won a couple games on Regent, dunno if that makes a difference, but I've read the advice here and I still feel rushed at the beginning of the game. Trying to do all these things listed, how about a timeline when I should think about building certain things or switch focus etc.

Also something that confuses me, is everyone says build lots of workers, but y if my city is just gonna build settlers and workers, then all the improve work tiles go unused.

Also it's easy to say don't automate workers, but I read the article about early stages, but I still feel that I'm not using the workers on the right tiles, does automating them usually mean they'll pick to do bad jobs or random stuff? should I automate one worker and manually task another worker to do opposite stuff?

Also with the expanding, how many turns should you have like 3 - 4 cities? this is another thing I feel I can't seem to do fast enough and wondered if there was a broad timeline , so I know if I'm expanding averagely or poorly, to have a more successcul civilization.

Thanks for any help/advice any can give.

 

[USC]

Hi Halfbadger,

Welcome to CivFanatics! (Unless you're not new and I've just missed you...)

Regarding your question on workers, there are a couple of reasons to be a little "ahead of the game" in tile development:

- Sometimes you may want to have tiles "used part time." This is mostly something for sick micromanagers like myself, but there are a few things that require only minimal micromangement. For example, if a city is getting a lot of food, it will automatically pick a low-food high-production as the new tile to work when it grows. This is often bad overall (often, you WANT the high growth to continue), but it so happens that on the turn of growth, food from the new tile is ignored and shields are not, so on that turn, the shields from that new tile are "free." A good "part-time" use for a mined hill or desert, unless you have a forest around.

Boy, I sure felt geeky writing that

- With tight city packing, you'll find you can use more tiles more quickly than at first seems possible, and as long as you allow each city 12 tiles for itself, the negative impact on growth will come so late (post-Hospitals) that you won't care.

- As you learn how to expand faster (don't worry, you will), you'll find yourself happy to have picked up the habit of building plenty of workers

- More workers = more irrigated bonus food tiles = more need for workers

- Granaries, my friend. (Though obviously not blindly everywhere -- a common suggestion is to build them anywhere where you have above-average food and plan to pump out settlers/workers.)

- If you do find yourself pointlessly ahead of the game in tile development, here's another way you can still convert your worker-turns into benefits for your civ: build roads to speed the movement of your settlers to your expansion sites.

All in all, the 10 shields and 20 food (or even just 10 food with a granary) invested in a worker pay for themselves astoundingly quickly.

-----------------------------------------------

In the "War Academy" section of CivFanatics, you will find articles about many things besides war. One of them is tile development. I think you'll really appreciate the articles there in that respect.

In general, start with the tiles that have the highest potential output in Despotism, and then work your way down the quality scale.

USC

 

[tuscan]

1) Expand: build settlers asap. No city, except for the capital if u want to build wonders, with more than 3-4 pop;

2) Workers: never automate, build road for commerce and mine for shields;

3) Temple: expand the radius of cities, more shiels and trade;

4) Science at minimum: save a lot of money & buy advance from other Civs, helps your diplomatic relations;

5) Military; building a large military prevents other Civ to attack you.

 

[HalfBadger]

thanks for the advice USC, I think most of the tile development stuff, just has to do with more focus on my part.

About the Hospitals thing, i've read a lot that most games are finished in the middle ages - early industrial age. I assume this would be done by Military victory, if so, is this done by ignoring most city improvements (only building, granary, barracks and temples?) and focusing more on building a huge military force to crush the AIs very early?

Maybe re-thinking my whole timeline of my games to mainly ancient and middle ages will help more of this advice to make sense. I usually start to dominate the AIs, after I get ToE then hoover dam and get a bunch of Tanks out and MI before them, is this strategy too drown out for the way most would on Regent?