What am I doing wrong???

[RalphR]

I did not like Civ 3 at all and so come from a Civ 2 background.

I just don't understand a lot of the reasoning behind Civ 4 and am just about to shelf it right next to that dusty box of Civ 3 and other abandoned games I wasted my money on.

Why am I severly punished for having a large civilization?

I have given every other civ everything they have ever asked for and yet I am still attacked over and over.

My score is consistantly near the bottom. I believe this is because of the poorly designed game mechanics that pointlessly punish me for having many cities but of course the poorly written manual has ZERO information that is helpful in this area. I guess they think ignorance is bliss.

I read where people say that one commerace city will keep a civ afloat all by itself. I call BS on that. I can have 3 cities with nothing but a little food and all the rest commerace and I can BARELY keep 50% research going.

I have tried (reloading) and converting to the religion of a civ that is unhappy with me to the point that they attack but that is completly a waste of time as they still attack no matter how much I whore my Civ out to them.

There are SO many STUPID designs in this game. Artillery is usless except as suicide attackers? Bombers and Battleships can't destroy a unit? The cost of running a city has nothing to do with the 50 units stationsed in that city or the number/kind of buildings in a city? What were they thinking?!

I think I will cool off for a week and then see if I want to put up with all the bugs and wacked out design decisions.

 

[goraemon]

.......
lol

 

[CivalGanjaman]

yo rallph you online right now and have some spare hours??

 

[kamigawan]

I was a Civ II vet, it took a while to learn IV but I love it. I needed to start off on warlord first to learn the new mechanics, so first and foremost I recommend you lower your difficulty to warlord when you are first learning, even if you played lots of Civ II. You will be moving up soon enough.

-On AI attacking you: No matter what, you need to have a decent military defense. Perceived military weakness is a primary reason for being attacked. In Civ II you could coast along with an extremely minimal army, not so in IV: if any AI senses you have significantly weaker military (keep an eye out for the rankings of "most powerful civilizations"), you will have a huge target on your back. AI will not only bully you and extort you, but will try to take your cities too.

-On appeasement: You need at least friendly relations to be effectively safe from attacks, which is virtually impossible to achieve with every civ. The computer makes "decisions to attack" after a basic cost:benefit military analysis, and once this has been done, nothing you do can change its mind. (To tell whether a civ is about to go to war, check diplomacy screen -> bribe "declare war on: civ", and it will be red and say "we have enough on our hands right now.")

-On artillery: Far from being useless, it is basically required for any successful military campaign. Above all you need to bombard city defenses such as walls or cultural bonus. Then you need to focus on correctly promoting your units, including your artillery (barracks and theocracy helps here) with city raider. They also have a reasonable chance of withdrawing a losing battle. My favorite time to go to war is when I first get the tech for catapults, and then attack with catapults/axemen; or when I first get artillery, then attack with infantry/artillery. Highly effective.

-On maintainance costs: Yup, some realism was sacrificed to streamline play and reduce micromanagement. Units do cost gold maintainance past a certain point, however, and this cost increases when you send them into neutral or enemy territory.

 

[sandman_civ]

Civ4 rewards careful planning towards empire building, not just mindless settlers settling on every square, or even worse, the civ2 caravan mechanic where all of your cities produced caravans to get to mike's chapel first.

Also, I applaud the designers in keeping the fun elements, and taking out the "not-fun" ESPECIALLY the 6-9 turns of anarchy where it was a huge waste of time managing each city - remember that? Also stack management is a lot better, I HATED moving units one at a time.

What's the use making a new game but keeping the mechanics of a previous game? Then it would be called "civ 2 the sequel".

 

[MrCynical]

OK, your first and most major problem is that while your empire is large in terms of land area, it is tiny in terms of population, which is far more important. You are absolutely stone last in population and the leader has four times your population. From this set up it is immensely difficult to win.

Now for the reasons why you are in this mess.
1) You have made little and inefficient use of your workers. Your capital is still using 6 or 7 completely unimproved squares, almost all of them floodplain and one of them with cows. These should have been the very first tiles to improve in the game. Many of your other cities are similarly short on improvements, and you have unconnected resources. There are large quantities of useless road everywhere. Roads give no benefit to a tile beyond movement and connection now, so if the road isn't going somewhere there's little point in having it.

2)You have several very small cities. Farm and improve food resources to boost these up. Timbuktu is your only city that's a respectable size at this stage of the game.

3)You have virtually no cottages. These are the key to commerce production since after being used for many turns they will evolve into villages and towns which will give at least 5 commerce per tile, and more with the right civics. None of your cities is producing very much commerce at the moment.

4)You have cities producing wealth, not a good move at this stage of the game, though I presume this is a desperate stop gap as you're losing a lot of gpt.

5)You've expanded too fast. Extra land is no use unless it's productive. Each city costs you maintenance, and will cost more the further it is from the capital and the more cities you have. Don't expand unless you can afford to pay for it. Your cities are also rather more spaced out than is advisable.

6)You have two religions founded in your capital, but no shrine for either, which could gain you a lot of money. Have you had no great people? Judging from your lack of wonders I suppose that's possible.

7)You were a bit unlucky starting next to Montezuma, who is extremely agressive. In most cases having the same religion as a civ will keep them friendly. It's very hard to keep every civ happy though.

I'd disagree with some of the design decisions you mark as stupid. If someone has 50 units in a city they will be paying for it in military upkeep. This is however paid from your civ's treasury, not by any individual city. Cities do cost you maintenance, which is your main problem, and to encourage the growth of large cities rather than ICS maintenance doesn't vary with buildings. This is a major improvement over the previous incarnations of Civ. Suicide artillery is a dubious decision, they would be better going back to the Civ 3 style where they worked as bombers do now. Bombers are perfectly fine as they are already immensely powerful. Battleships it could be argued should have Civ 3 style bombardment back. One commerce city can keep a civ afloat and I've done it several times. None of your cities are even close to being commerce powerhouses though, due to your complete lack of cottages.

Civ 4 doesn't punish you for having a large civilization, it punishes you for having many poor and unproductive cities. Many of yours simply aren't pulling their weight. Unlike in Civ 2 it is no longer essential to have a lot of land to win, but it still helps. You just have to do rather more planning and manage it's aquisition better.

Finally, turn down the difficulty level for your first game. Noble is more or less level between you and the AI, and it knows how the game works better than you do. Try Chieftain or Warlord till you get the hang of it.

 

[punchandpie]

I took a quick look at your game, and from what I saw briefly, I would have to agree with what MrCynical has posted. THE #1 thing is the ineffiency of your cities and what your workers are doing in them. I think that if you change some tiles and quickly improve the ones that you have left, you will find a major turn around. Starting next to Montezuma doesn't help, but its not a totaly bad thing. One thing to remember that I have learned rather quickly through gameplay and these forums is that The Most Land Doesn't always Equal The Most Powerful Civ. Having alot of land helps, but its how you use the land that is important.

 

[ellie]

Golden rule i used for expansion was a very simple one.

If i couldnt maintain 50% science during initial expansion without losing gold, i took it as a sign i was over-expanding. You have to expand gradually, buiding commerce as you go

It does seem strange, i have come from civ 3 and had to resist my urge to build endless cxxc cities but it gives the player with a smallish quality empire a chance .

One side effect is conquered cities though. If you can research bronze working and get axemen v.early (with resource) you can roll over neighbours v.quickly..but u might get killed by keeping the cities.

Hmm this is just personal observations from my own noble game.

 

[Bezhukov]

Unimproved tiles barely pay for the citizen working them. I've found worker management to be the area that yields the biggest bang-for-the-buck for someone looking to improve their Civ play, from the beginning of the series to CivIV.

 

[CivBattle]

RalphR had a look at your game.. and advise thats given above is good.. in the south u have built what I would call a dead town, no tiles that give u anything in return... aswell using your worker to build workshops in tiles that aren't going to be used by any of our towns.. Improving your use tiles fast/early with cottages,farms,mines and so on is more important with Civ4 than earlier Civ's.
You are playing with the Malinese traits Spiritual = no anarchy.. with pacifism u'll go from -14 to +5..with some micromanagement u'll be able to get +20-30. With more tile improvements u'll be able to turn the sci up. The cow south timbu needs pasture.. The Finanical trait gives u some building bonuses. Banking is nice to fet, since Mansa's favourite civic is Free Market.. with better foreign relations u should be able earn more mony.. At present in your game u should be able to get the most of the whole world map..
Many of your units are out of date... that is one of the reasons the other civ are picking on u..

Artillery units and modern ships with bombard are a big must later in the game.. u need them to soften defense and enemy units..

I only bought civ4 two weeks ago.. tried it on settlers just see how things work against 5 other AI's , nice teacher on foreign diplomacy (thou u get many bonuses. Try a dual on warlord up get feel of how the different builds work.. And u can find out different ways to research.. If u want try a co-op multi I'm in.. at the moment I've conquered the world Noble, aswell as a Spaceship and Diplomatic victory.

A few questions.. I haven't had a look at game log but have u had a golden age.. Great person are to some extent more flexible and they are great value too achieve a golden age.. since u come from CivII where golden ages weren't a game concept..

 

[Maestro_Innit]

Wow Ralph....


RTFM

 

[Beamup]

The short version is this.

Play Civ4 as if it was Civ2, and you will get your head handed to you. It's not the same game, the same strategies do not still work in many cases. "You must unlearn what you have learned."

 

[Cam_H]

Ralph,

I can't disagree with too much that's been said before. It would seem that there's been a real land-grab before getting the Malinese empire to a point where it can support such a size, and city support is weighing you down.

I played a few turns of your game (please bear with me, I'm merely a Prince level player), and for starters ... how unfortunate you've been drawing four aggressive tribes with none other than the Mongols as neighbours!

I felt that the most pressing matter was dealing with the Aztec Catapults, Rifleman, and Knights roaming between Goa and Awdaghost. Being 'spiritual' you can switch civics without penalty, so I went the warrior-path and took up Slavery, Theocracy, and Vassalage, and began whipping out promoted Musketmen in the north-eastern cities. I also upgraded one of your Skirmishers in Gao to a Crossbow. The science rate dropped, and I got your 'wealth' cities to be a bit more productive. Two Musketmen were able to take out the unprotected stack of Cats, while I eventually wore out the other invaders. Montezuma refused to talk for quite some time, but did not land a follow-up invasion force before peace was struck, giving away Theology in the peace deal. After that minor conflict (which could well have been a major disaster I suspect), I opted for more productive options including pressing ahead with plenty of Musketmen. With all of the whipping, the score actually dropped to last place due to population loss, although it's a small price to pay for survival imho.

Cyrus had adopted Judaism, and I felt the benefit of converting over from the sole-Hindu state to a shared religion would at least lessen any tensions. Open Borders with the Mongols and the Persians would help the chance to keep the peace. There were also a small number of trade opportunities to be made. Eventually Tibuktu and Kumbi Saleh were also used to produce some Jewish Missionaries to spread the religion into the Mongolia as well as your own cities once the Temple of Soloman was built (refer below).

I switched much of the production to Courthouses. In a few years Kumbi Saleh would produce a Great Engineer, and I was unable to build the Forbidden Palace due to too few Courthouses. A number of turns after that, Awdaghost would produce a Great Prophet, and while a Golden Age was tempting, I went with the Temple of Soloman and the Forbidden Palace instead. Only a few cities had Barracks, so given the extremely frail state of the military, these were also of some priority.

I agree with others' comments on the use of workers. There seems to be quite a lot of development on tiles outside of any city boundaries, and in a few cases some undeveloped special resources (cattle, iron, incense). I would use a few forest chops on forests outside of any city's boundaries, and on forested grasslands to speed up production. Cottages work well on food-rich sites such as grasslands and floodplains. I would also look at using windmills on hills around cities that are low in good growth such as Niani.

Tech-wise, Mali has very little to trade with, and unfortunately despite generally good relations, nobody was gifting Mali any technology either. Financial may be a particularly handy trait here however, and longer-term technology recovery could well be well within reach once the support costs were better controlled (Temple of Soloman, more Couthouses, Forbidden Palace, Lighthouses, Pacifism instead of Organised Religion). There seems a few good spots left within your empire to plop down a few more cities, but as noted, you really need to consolidate your empire better, and particularly address the defence issue first, especially with so many aggressors in the game.

Best of luck with it.

 

[eric_]

I would use a few forest chops on forests outside of any city's boundaries, and on forested grasslands to speed up production.

You can chop outside the fat cross and benefit from it?

 

[Beamup]

Yes, you can. You don't get as many hammers, but you still get a decent amount.

 

[MrCynical]

Yes, the hammers simply go to whichever the nearest city to the forest is. Once you go more than 3 squares from the city you get fewer hammers from chopping the tile though, but it's still worth doing.

 

[T'Jourd]

yo rallph you online right now and have some spare hours??

to Ralph:
"I did not like Civ 3 at all and so come from a Civ 2 background."


Dude! Did you even read the manual?? I believe it clearly states somewhere in it that this civ is not like your previous experiences in C2 or C3.

Good luck on Settler first then work up using others comments here.