Warlord Difficulty tips

[Splinterguitar]

I'm not exactly new to Civ (I have Civ Rev on my Xbox) so I understand the concepts of the game.

However, I've had Civ 4 BTS for nearly 4 months, and I'm stuck moving into Warlord difficulty. Chieftan is far too easy, and Warlord is VERY hard for me. I can't seem to get an in between, which leads me to believe there's something simple I'm missing here. I was asking to see if anyone had any advice or tips based on the biggest troubles I face most commonly. Most have to do with streamlining my Specialist Economy strategy.

Here are the list of things that usually go wrong or I have problems with in my games:

-Making money: In my early games I spend most of my time in the red. Just as I can build to +1/+2 CPT I need to found a new city, and my profits are lost. I find myself having to rely on friendly villages for exploration cash so I can stay competitive technologically.

-Switching into a Specialist Economy: Whenever I set up enough specialists in my cities to even out the lost science from dropping the bar to 0%, my cities can't grow and my production is *terrible*. When I back off of the specialists to allow growth, I end up with a tech disadvantage. Even with Representation. Do I not understand the relationship between food, hammers, population level, and specialists? I'm getting the feeling there's basic "givens" on this I don't know. (I don't have a manual for my game, either). Do I just need a lesson in micromanagement?

-Military: I almost always end up with a city or two being taken from me by the time I have researched Calender. When I stop and build up the ridiculous armies in each city this difficulty apparently demands, I never have time to build important buildings and settlers to expand and hence keep up my science. Is it better to start with around 3 cities and take my neighbor's later?

I guess that's it. Again, I feel like there are basic things I am missing such as how to diplomatically turn one nation against another, keep a tech lead while still keeping a military lead while still keeping my economy in the green, and how to run a solid specialist economy. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks

 

[duckstab]

I'm not exactly new to Civ (I have Civ Rev on my Xbox) so I understand the concepts of the game.

However, I've had Civ 4 BTS for nearly 4 months, and I'm stuck moving into Warlord difficulty. Chieftan is far too easy, and Warlord is VERY hard for me. I can't seem to get an in between, which leads me to believe there's something simple I'm missing here. I was asking to see if anyone had any advice or tips based on the biggest troubles I face most commonly. Most have to do with streamlining my Specialist Economy strategy.

If you are struggling with Warlord difficulty then you are probably getting ahead of yourself in attempting to master a Specialist Economy. I'd recommend sticking to a Cottage Economy when you move up a level and only try an SE once you've won a game or two.

Here are the list of things that usually go wrong or I have problems with in my games:

-Making money: In my early games I spend most of my time in the red. Just as I can build to +1/+2 CPT I need to found a new city, and my profits are lost. I find myself having to rely on friendly villages for exploration cash so I can stay competitive technologically.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, but it seems you are either not working enough commerce-producing tiles or are not improving your land properly in the first place. You really should be able to comfortably expand to around 6 cities without crashing your economy. After that point, you need to start paying attention to maintenance costs and will probably need techs like Code of Laws and Currency to help with that.

-Switching into a Specialist Economy: Whenever I set up enough specialists in my cities to even out the lost science from dropping the bar to 0%, my cities can't grow and my production is *terrible*. When I back off of the specialists to allow growth, I end up with a tech disadvantage. Even with Representation.

If you're running Representation this early, you've probably built the Pyramids when you could have been expanding. That could be a major problem right there. The Mids are a powerful wonder but they're incredibly expensive at that stage of the game. Most experienced players tend to avoid it unless they have a way of getting the job done quickly, like being Industrious, having Stone, lots of forests for chopping, or lots of food for whipping. The more of these you're missing, the less likely it is the Pyramids are a good idea.

Do I not understand the relationship between food, hammers, population level, and specialists? I'm getting the feeling there's basic "givens" on this I don't know. (I don't have a manual for my game, either). Do I just need a lesson in micromanagement?

-Military: I almost always end up with a city or two being taken from me by the time I have researched Calender. When I stop and build up the ridiculous armies in each city this difficulty apparently demands, I never have time to build important buildings and settlers to expand and hence keep up my science. Is it better to start with around 3 cities and take my neighbor's later?

I guess that's it. Again, I feel like there are basic things I am missing such as how to diplomatically turn one nation against another, keep a tech lead while still keeping a military lead while still keeping my economy in the green, and how to run a solid specialist economy. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks

The rest of your post is more abstract so my suggestion would be for you to post a save. There are plenty of players who'll be happy to offer advice, and most of them are better than me.

 

[s.bernbaum]

You are most likely not developing your city tiles adequately and not allocating them properly with micromanagement. You may not be training enough workers, which is a common beginning problem. If you post a 4000 BC save along with another, once you have two or three cities, people can tell you what they see you are doing wrong and what they would have done with your starting position.

Besides that, I would suggest going to the War Academy (from the CIV drop down menu at the top of the forum screen) and reading the beginner articles. They explain a lot of the basics.

 

[Splinterguitar]

Okay, I think the both of you helped a lot. Thanks for all your help. If I still run into problems I'll post a save

Just to be sure I'm on the same page with you guys, I should 1) Master a cottage economy, and while doing that experiment with specialists and Great People farming; 2) Expand, Defend, Build in that order and 3) Be sure to build more workers which will lead to better tile development. I think I got it.

One more thing, any tips on city specialization? Like, what types of land/resource criteria usually constitute a science city? Or a wealth city? Or production?

The good thing I've learned about getting a taste of the SE early is that, when properly utilized, specializing cities are much more effective than having a group off "all around" cities. At least for my style of playing, anyway.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

We had a lot of this discussion recently - see this thread.

Making money: In my early games I spend most of my time in the red. Just as I can build to +1/+2 CPT I need to found a new city, and my profits are lost. I find myself having to rely on friendly villages for exploration cash so I can stay competitive technologically.

I'm in the red most of the time. It's not important - what you care about is actual beakers per turn, not profitability.

Switching into a Specialist Economy: Whenever I set up enough specialists in my cities to even out the lost science from dropping the bar to 0%, my cities can't grow and my production is *terrible*. When I back off of the specialists to allow growth, I end up with a tech disadvantage. Even with Representation. Do I not understand the relationship between food, hammers, population level, and specialists? I'm getting the feeling there's basic "givens" on this I don't know. (I don't have a manual for my game, either). Do I just need a lesson in micromanagement?

No, you first need lessons in macromanagement. It's your strategy that's broken right now, in some fundamental ways, not your execution. Which fundamental ways we still need to work out.

Military: I almost always end up with a city or two being taken from me by the time I have researched Calender. When I stop and build up the ridiculous armies in each city this difficulty apparently demands, I never have time to build important buildings

It's very common for inexperienced players to rate buildings over units; prioritizing units over buildings makes everything much much easier.

Hint: there aren't many important buildings before Calendar.

I also notice that you mention armies and settlers and buildings, but you don't mention Workers, which are a critical unit in the early game. That's suspicious.

Is it better to start with around 3 cities and take my neighbor's later?

Maybe. Depends on what you are looking at on the map, which neighbors you have. I normally find that there's more good land available than that, so I'll usually take the land first, convert that to a decisive advantage, then take the cities my neighbor has been keeping for me.

One more thing, any tips on city specialization?

Hmm - how about "not yet?" as a tip. That will be important later, but right now your primary problems are peaceful land acquisition, land development, and hostile land acquisition.

 

[Cam_H]

Splinterguitar,

Welcome to the forums!

It's hard not to write a thesis on each of the points you raise, so instead I'll point you to 'mandatory reading' instead in case you've not come across Sisiutil's Strategy Guide so far.

(Crosspost with VoU ... who makes a fair 'non-point' point on this) ... As for city specialisation, maybe; A Guide to City Specialization and the Land Improvements that surround them. (ver 1.6) by Excl might help. Often the resources within a city's 'big fat cross' / workable area point to the type of specialisation ... Cows + Iron could be Production, Gems + Dye could be Commerce, captured foreign capital could be Farm assuming multiple food resources you're likely to find in these.

All the best!

 

[Splinterguitar]

Thumbs up to all of you! It generally just sounds like I'm missing some fundamental things in my strategy and I need to go back, be patient, and decipher what is important to build and when. All things seemingly done with practice and patience.

If there are anymore tips you'd wanna throw a noob then by all means, I won't stop you. This seems to have helped a lot.

 

[ahcos]

Generally i'd say "Follow everything Voice of Unreason says", but i don't know how much time you have to read up all the important stuff, so here are some general tips that should be enough to beat warlords:

- As a rule of thumb, 1,5 workers per city. 6 cities = 9 workers. Try to always stay ahead in workercount compared to citycount, so if you're about to found a 6th city, make sure you at least have 6 workers by that time.
- cottage every flat non-special tile AND WORK THEM. That's pretty much all you need to do in order to keep ahead of the AI on that difficulty: build cottages and work them. You don't need to worry about specialists or anything to make that work.
- Improve food first. If possible, try to aim around +6 food for a city before it works anything else. That could be a wet corn resource, or a fish + lighthouse, or two dry rice resources. That could also mean that you have to farm 4 grassland riverside tiles so you get towards +6 food in that city, but food is most important in your cities.
- Chop forests! Chop them early! Chop them alot! You don't need to save them for anything. If you have 6 cities and 9 workers, dedicate 3 of them solely to chop forests.
- Research Agriculture, Animal Husbandery, The Wheel, Mining, Bronzeworking and Pottery before everything else. If you have alot of fishing resources, you obviously need fishing and sailing at one point. If you're stuck in the jungle, consider Ironworking after the initial workertechs, if you have alot of Calendar resources, go towards Calendar after Alphabet
- Research plan overall: Workertechs first, towards Alphabet and start trading for the techs you lack, Currency, Monarchy, Code of Laws, Civil Service, the way towards Liberalism, the way towards Assembly Line, Plastics, Ecology, Fusion. There is hardly anything you can do wrong with that. Always trade for techs you lack as soon as possible, although if you stick to the other tips people gave you you'll be so far ahead in tech that there barely will be trading opportunies at all.

As you can see, all of those tips evolve around tile improvements, and basicly that's the only thing that you have to worry about to beat Warlord. If you have the right tile improvements, it doesn't matter too much what you do in other parts of the game on that difficulty.

 

[NetGear]

iirc chieftain and warlord gap is considerable. In chief ais never dow.

I know it sounds weird but id recommend moving to noble. Its not a bad idea to start from lowest and gradually mive up but in lowest difficulty there are some really weird handicaps for ais and you dont want to climitatize your play to those conditions. In the long run starting at noble might do you better.

And as vou saud fix your macro. Micro isnt your concern atm.

 

[Splinterguitar]

Cool cool. Here's an update on all of this if anyone is still following this:

I decided the best way to figure these things out are to put myself on a Duel map on Warlord difficulty, and slowly work up to more opponents. This way I can slowly adapt to the demands the higher difficulty brings to my strategy.

Long story short; I chose Elizabeth (I seem to do VERY well with her, Lincoln, and both Indian leaders), and the game pitted me against the Incans. At first I was disappointed that my Financial advantage went out the window, but I remembered the advice you guys gave me. He still managed to stay VERY close to me in techs (He actually beat me to Liberalism) which motivated me to just got invade his ass with a bunch of Redcoats and Cannons. Those did the trick pretty well. Ended up winning a Domination Victory

All in all I just kept working my tiles, kept my cities defended, and expanded into about 5 cities. Keeping my citizens working the cottages ended up solving my commerce & hence technology problems.

If I have any problems from here on out, I'll post a save and get advice from anyone who still would like to add their two cents.

Cheers and once again thank you for helping me win my first Warlord difficulty victory

 

[michmbk]

Congrats on the win...for future games, keep in mind that 5 cities is nothing. You should have more than that by 1 AD. Sounds like in addition to mastering the basic gameplay concepts that ahcos mentioned, you'll want to practice expanding.

you ought to try a game where your capital, once it hits size 5, builds nothing but workers & settlers until you've filled out as much of the map as possible, or brought your tech rate down to 0-10%. Then try rebuilding from there with the economic techs (alphabet, currency, COL, sometimes monarchy). Even though in the short run your tech rate will suffer, you'll destroy the AI with superior land later on in the game.

 

[coanda]

I'm going to second NetGear in recommending diving right into Noble. You'll probably lose 1-2 games initially, but if you focus on improving your play (thinking about what worked and what didn't, getting advice, etc.) you'll be moving up to Prince+ in no time. If you start on Warlord, the handicaps etc. are going to keep you from seeing what's actually good and what's only working because it's Warlord.

 

[vranasm]

why be so conservative? Start at Monarch right away...at this point of game no reason to lose time on Noble with the stuff around (let's plays, strategy articles, forum games etc)

I would strongly recommend to ignore Wonders while going up in difficulty (at least until Immortal), relying on wonders makes you bad player.

The other recommendation is to take your time to read some stuff and watch some videos, then play some games

 

[ahcos]

Hm, well, actually (even if it's hard to believe after all this years the game is out ) there still are "casual" players out there that don't have the time or the interest in reading up tons of stuff to improve their play. As a matter of fact, even those players get dragged in by the game as soon as they've won their first game on Noble, a difficulty they thought they'd never beat So imo it's best to stick to the "move up slowly while focusing on the basics" path rather than the "start with Monarch, lose a few games while reading/watching all the stuff", although that's surely the better approach to quickly move up in difficulty, no doubt. But after all the game is about having fun, and it is more fun to beat the AI with unexperienced gameplay @Noble rather than losing with more knowledge @Monarch.

@topic:

In addition to what i've written early in this thread, here are some basics you can stick to in order to beat basicly everything up to at least Noble, i'd even say Prince:

- You need 6 cities to win. With 6 cities, you can build every national wonder, and those enable you basicly every victory condition (although Space might be tricky)
- LAND IS POWER. Build workers/settlers/units ONLY until there's no good spot left to take. If you can grab more land peacefully, do so. You'll learn that it's more wise to not settle towards certain leaders or to block them, but usually on these lower difficulties they're less likely to attack you, especially when your empire is large.
- Wonders do NOT win games, neither do religions. Don't build wonders at all, rather build workers (!), settlers and units. If you really have nothing else to build, chose building Wealth (if you're losing gold @ 100% research slider) or Research. If you still want to build wonders, there are only two worth pursuing: The Great Library on every setting, and The Great Lighthouse on maps where you have alot of coastal cities, otherwise skip that one aswell.
- Civics: Hereditary Rule, Slavery, Organized Religion, later on Bureaucracy, even later Free Market. Representation, Emancipation, Free Speech, Free Religion for the very lategame. Slavery is the strongest civic in the game. Use it.
- Every city needs a granary, and that's it. Do not waste your time building infrastructure you don't need. With huge empires you'll also want courthouses, lighthouses for coastal cities, baracks for cities that produce units most of the time. Later on, hammer rich cities will build a forge/factory, commerce rich library, university, observatory. But remember that tile improvements are alot more important than buildings, so don't waste Infra for Workers or Settlers!
- One city for specialists! Pick a city with high food value, for example a 6-food-tile (grassland pig, wet corn), build a Library, assign two scientists. Use those scientists to build academies in your capital and the best commerce cities. There are other uses for Scientists, but on the lower difficulties you don't need to worry about them. When you've unlocked the national epic via Literature, build the national epic in that city.
- Be nice @ Diplomacy. Give in to their demands when you're weak. Make favourable trades with them, like trading (your) Alphabet for (their) Monotheism. Adapt their religion. Open borders as soon as possible. Make resource trades, maybe even ones you do not need. All this improves your Diplo towards the AI to a point where you can focus on building up your empire without getting declared on by the AI.

This is almost overkill on tips, but w/e Alot of these things are very short-sighted and biased towards the lower difficulties, you WILL need to explore further strategies if you want to move up. But as i said, with those tips it's actually very easy to beat at least Prince.

Still, you can't emphazise one thing often enough: TILE IMPROVEMENTS WIN THE GAME on that difficulty. You need food, commerce and production, and to improve tiles you need workers, those need the techs to know how to improve the tile, and to have tiles you need settlers. More cities -> more tiles worked -> more research and production.

 

[NetGear]

why be so conservative? Start at Monarch right away...at this point of game no reason to lose time on Noble with the stuff around (let's plays, strategy articles, forum games etc)

I would strongly recommend to ignore Wonders while going up in difficulty (at least until Immortal), relying on wonders makes you bad player.

The other recommendation is to take your time to read some stuff and watch some videos, then play some games

I think nobel is good starting point for beginners still. Youre right in that monarch could really be consideted the starting point of real game because thats when you start dealing with ais that enjoys advantages. And most of this game becomes about turning those advantages around.

Prince iirc has very minimal advantage and is basically noble plus. In the perspective of newcomer ai advantages may be too overwhelming. So thats the only reason why i recommend noble. I still think there are lower lvl players around even though player skill has greatly inflated since when we all started because of what we know / games age etc.

Oh and i mistook chief for settler. In settler ai never dows. Not sure about chief.

 

[stoferb]

-Military: I almost always end up with a city or two being taken from me by the time I have researched Calender. When I stop and build up the ridiculous armies in each city this difficulty apparently demands, I never have time to build important buildings and settlers to expand and hence keep up my science. Is it better to start with around 3 cities and take my neighbor's later?

You only need one garrison in every city. More than that is reserved for cities in danger of being taken (they border to a warmonger or used to belong to a warmonger or both). That being said, you should have a small offensive army even if you don't plan to war anytime soon.

 

[Um the Muse]

All those other tips are great. I just saw one glaringly obvious one that hasn't been mentioned: build a worker first. Trust me, it makes a world of difference (as long as he can do something right away ).

 

[pigswill]

Best tip is indeed work good tiles, particularly resources, which also means early worker(s) and research relevant techs (basically agric, mining, AH, sometimes hunting or masonry).

 

[stimpyhoek]

1/ Make the 10 axe wonder

thats it

 

[ahcos]

1/ Make the 10 axe wonder

thats it

That has nothing to do with getting better. You'll be stuck @ Monarch with that strategy forever.