What am I doing wrong?

[xBlackWolfx]

I haven't played civ4 in years, and I used to be able to play on warlord.

Now, the past two times I tried, I got slaughtered like I was nothing.

I try to follow guides on this site, like building specialized cities, but that only makes things worse!

And the AI spreads too damned fast, I can only get at most 3 cities on the board before the map is completely taken! Then I end up playing the game surrounded by empires with 10+ cities from the start of the game. I can't build any wonders fast enough, I can't build military units fast enough, I always lag behind on research, and everytime I start a war for some bizarre reason the probabily that my unit will win, is always less than 1 percent, even if I bombard the city to remove the defensive bonus! And the AI seems to be able to summon units out of nowhere. I was playing one game, where I was trying to take a city from a guy, and I killed all three units in it, but for some reason it didn't give me it! I checked again, and suddenly he had more than 10 high-level units in there, and there's no way they could've walked in there without me noticing! This makes no sense.

And I did do a few levels on chieftain, it was a complete joke to me, thus why I decided to try warlord again.

Of course, I have been getting pretty crappy starts. The second try I was set in an area that was 75% desert and mountains. I managed to make friends with the largest guys on the map, only for them all to turn on me when the only guy below me in score decided to declare war. Twice now I didn't even make it to 1950 before I got overwhelmed by a seemingly unlimited number of high-level combat units. Seriously, where are they all coming from and how can they pay the maintenance cost on all of those???

I've read the guides on this site, but it only makes things worse. At least on my first attempt I had 2 people below me the whole game.

If it matters what civilizations I had, first one where I got slaughtered I had Germany (bismark I believe, it's the one that was 'industrious and expansive' or something like that, I decided to try and go for a cultural victory since the only thing he's good at it building wonders and making large cities). Second game (well the third, I abandoned the second bc I didn't have any decent land) I got louis of france, Again, decided to go for a cultural victory. None of my cities could built fast enough, I had no income, despite having 2 coastal cities, one of which was surrounded by cottages (seriously, I had so much money around that city it only had 1 hammer, it was a good city before I foolishly cleared all the forests...)

What am I doing wrong and how can I find out??? The guides on this site aren't any help at all. They just tell you to do stupid crap that obviously doesn't work.

If it matters, I have the warlords expansion. I technically have the beyond the sword one too (got everything off of steam when it was on sale), but I haven't installed it since it would take even longer than the base game, and besides I used to play with warlords all the time anyway.

What am I supposed to do? Chieftain is a joke to me, and warlords is futile. I obviously need to play at a difficulty in between, but there is none!

 

[xBlackWolfx]

And yes, I am building barraks and stables and military academies to make sure my combat units all start off with some experience. I've also noticed that the enemy AI starts the game with fully-upgraded units.

If I do what the guides say, my cities grow INSANELY slowly, generate less than 20 science a turn, take 100 turns to build anything (literally), and take 10 turns to churn out one combat unit, even if the city is surrounded by hills, grasslands, and mines.

 

[Tatran]

The guides on this site aren't any help at all. They just tell you to do stupid crap that obviously doesn't work.

Waiting for Seraiel...

Seriously, when someone can't win at warlord, he or she probably doesn't understand the basics of civ4.
The civ4 AI knows how to play the game and gets more bonuses when the human player, who gets more penalties, is moving up in level.
And unlike in civ5 the civ4 AI only techs faster and faster when the game progresses.
At the lowest levels you can get settlers from goody huts. Those days are over when you reach warlord or higher levels. Same thing for the free workers.
The guide "Knowing your enemy" is a great help to understand the differences between all leaders.
The micro challenge featuring "the granary"made by Kossin is a great exercise to learn the working of the most important building in the game.
Cities should have at least one food resource otherwise it takes too long to grow
and you can use food to convert into hammers with the "slavery" civic which comes with the Bronze Working technology.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Regarding what Tatran said about bonuse. To clarify: At Noble you and the AIs are equal as far as bonus advantages go. Below Noble you get the advantage. This includes Chieftain and Warlord. Warlord gives you fewer bonuses. At levels above Prince, the AIs get the advantage in bonuses. Prince only a little bit more than Noble but bigger jumps after that.

As for advice, it is difficult to do so without seeing what you are doing, in order to advise you to do it differently. I would suggest that you post a game in the Civ4 - Strategy & Tips forum. Just post the opening then see what people suggest. PLay a few moves, no more than 10 perhaps less. Post the new status of the game. Wait for advice. Repeat. You will get loads of advice. However, be aware most people play BTS, so you will get less help on Warlords expansion but we do have people here who prefer that or also play it, so you should get some advice.

 

[Seraiel]

Is it possible that your cities are working the wrong tiles? The city govenor often makes very idiotic choice like to not work the food etc. .

I believe that you build the wrong kinds of buildings, Barracks + Stables i. e. aren't absolutely necessary, Barracks are a good choice when building many troops from one city but if you i. e. only build 3 troops from 1 city then you don't want to build a Barracks. Getting 5XP units is also easier via running Theocracy so save the resources and don't build Stables. What you need are Granaries because they enhance the city-growth and it's mandatory to run Slavery in the beginning, sometimes even for the whole game to produce units and buildings via the whip.
In the beginning of the game it's much about buildorders, like if you i. e. build a Worker first you can improve the tiles around your city, then build a Settler at size 3 and expand, build a 2nd Settler directly afterwards and try getting 3 cities 'til 2000BC. Then build some more Workers, improve and only build as much military as necessary to deal with the barbs. Make sure you claim food-resources in the first ring of the new settlements and directly improve them so that the cities grow faster, get up Granaries and then produce units via Slavery / whipping again. A 2nd benchmark would be 7 cities at 1AD and that without sacrificing too much research so while building Cottages and connecting the cities with roads. 7 cities 'til 1 AD is not easy so if you manage 5 and i. e. 100BPT at 100% at 1AD that's already good.
Wonder aren't necessary for anything. If you have a chance to get the Oracle ok but all I wrote before is much more important so getting cities, population and manually assigning the cities to work only improved tiles if possible.

 

[0ttovonBismarck]

And the AI spreads too damned fast, I can only get at most 3 cities on the board before the map is completely taken! Then I end up playing the game surrounded by empires with 10+ cities from the start of the game.

To me this seems to be your main problem here. I always do is build 2-3 cities asap in good locations for both food and production. Then start cranking out units and I go for the early military techs and wipe out as many neighbours as you can and only keep the cities in the most ideal and strategic locations. If you don't over-extend yourself this will help you advance much faster than your remaining rivals early on.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Started another game, before I started getting replies to this.

I managed to get about 5 or 6 cities, of course after a bit of exploration I found that I'm alone on an island with one other civ. I may conquer him at some point (especially since he built a city where I wanted to put one, just one turn before my settler arrived).

I didn't bother to 'specialize' my cities; they're all a pretty even mix of food, hammers, and commerce. But after reading this, I have started to micro-manage the cities to get them to do what I want. Typically I have them focus on food until the population gets up to where anymore would result in angry citizens, then I move things around to stagnate the growth and focus on commerce or hammers. I seem to be doing well, I'm at the top of the list score-wise (though I've only managed to find 3 other civs so far). But I haven't had a war yet. Right now, my only 'neighbors' are both pleased with me, but I don't know how long that will last. Like I said, I may decide to conquer the only other civ on the island. Though he's best-of-best friends with me, he has a lot of resources I want. And besides, I may need more territory to get top score and actually win anyway.

Right now, I'm sending some Triemes around my island, and one close by to explore the map. I can't trade world maps yet, otherwise I would do that, but I am researching paper so that will happen soon. Oh, as for the third civ? He hates my guts because I was trading and having a good time with another civ that he was at war with. But he's a pretty good distance away from me, and he would have to fight his way through another massive empire to get to me. So I'm not really worried. He also has the lowest score, by far. I suspect my friend will conquer him sooner or later. Though I am somewhat worried that she will turn on me eventually, I suspect her army may be superior to mine. Spent the last few 'decades' churning out combat units, which well are kinda useless since I'm alone on an island with someone who literally has no problem with me.

 

[Seraiel]

@ xBlackWolfx:

Managing happiness is also most easily done by the whip so simply whip a large building like a Library or also Settlers / Workers or (last resort) Markets because those give and you can reduce the population by 4 but generally Settlers + Workers are the most important while Libraries are only good in commerce-cities when playing for a non-militarical victory. When you produce Settlers or Workers citizens also don't consume and the city doesn't grow so the very last resort is always to slow build a Worker or a Settler, whipping something useful is better though.

And score comes almost exclusively by population so having a high score comes from having high population. For all victories except time-victories score isn't of any importance though so try to conquer your neighbours and win as early as possible.

Diplomacy in CIV should be calculated. Having the neighbours on pleased is very important because most civs cannot declare war on pleased so with the right neighbours and all of them on pleased completely ignoring the military unless some garrisons for happiness is possible, this allows getting the important building earlier. I often bribe several civs against one single civ that is far away and then share war.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Well the situation has somewhat changed.

My island-mates to the north (Ragnar) changed their religion, so now they're 'cautious' towards me. But I'm hesitant to declare war on him, since I've been trading with both him and elizabeth to the west, so I'm thinking they're on friendly terms with eachother, meaning that if I go to war with ragnar I may incur the wrath of an empire at least three times as large as mine. And also I've discovered that tokugawa is on another continent to the east, and he hates me. He seems to dominate the entire continent (I explored its entire shoreline with some caravels), and the military advisor is showing that one civ was killed at some point. There's also two other civs my boats have stumbled on, but I can't find their territory anywhere, and no one will trade world maps with me.

My plan to deal with the growing threat: try to butter up elizabeth more so hopefully she won't declare war on me if ragnar does. I'll be sending missionaries into ragnar's territory (we have an open borders treaty) to try and spread my religion into his cities so I can perhaps make him switch back. And I'm moving my entire army to the eastern side of the island in case I go to war with tokugawa, though I don't know if I could handle him to be honest. Maybe by buttering up Elizabeth I can get her to go to war with him, this may cause her to attack him from the east, while I attack him from the west. This might make a war with him easier.

Judging by my past success in warfare, I have no idea if I could actually win a war or what I could do to get my win chance past 1%.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Went to war with the Japanese, was unable to get Elizabeth to help though because 'We would have nothing to gain'.

Razed a city they built on a 2 by 1 island just to see if I could handle his army, his units seem to be a few techs behind mine. He's defending his cities with longbowmen, and I'm coming after him with macemen, conquistadors, pikemen, crossbowmen, and trebuchets. I lost a few units taking out his capital, and another city, but I managed to take both.

Thinking that perhaps I should split my army in two. The new units in one, the combat-experienced units in another. That way, I can soften up their defenses with my new units before I go in with the more valuable units after the chances of winning are over 75% or something like that.

I've already lost nearly half my army (though I left a few of them behind to defend my newly-conquered cities). I may be able to take another city, or I may not. Not sure if I'll risk it yet. Sadly, neither of his cities were built near anything of real value (one was only 2 spaces away from his capital, starting to think that keeping it was a mistake). I'm not so sure this will really help me out or not. I guess the experienced combat units may count for something.

As for Ragnar, he won't convert because he 'doesn't like me enough'. Luckily though, he still seems interested in being friends, so I'm not too worried about him. And I asked him and Elizabeth what they thought of eachother, they're both 'pleased' with eachother, so going to war with Ragnar would be a very very bad idea.

For right now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I don't feel like I can continue my campaign for much longer, but if I do get a peace treaty with him, he may eventually rebuild and retaliate. Think I may need to churn out more units. Oh, and my citizens are starting to get war weary. So I may need to end this soon.

 

[Seraiel]

AIs are basically not capable of naval oversea's invasions. It can happen that an AI sends some boats with troops but it's like a 1-3% case so I wouldn't worry about Tokugawa. A mistake that many beginners imo. make (this is in regards towards the other civs not trading you worldmaps) is that they are hesitant to gift techs towards other civs for diplomatic bonuses. As I already wrote diplomacy is an incredibly powerful tool in civ and especially on higher difficulty levels tech-trade becomes more important. One basically self-techs only one tech and trades that tech against several other techs. This concept is called "tech-trade-train" which describes that one needs to jump onto that train and then one can i. e. isolate civs by not trading techs towards them to make civs become more and more backwards and then fight them with having a technological advantage.

Regarding the war situation Lizzy:

If a civ becomes uncommonly large situations may arise at which fighting them isn't possible anymore. I didn't encounter that situation in my games yet but on a map that has several continents situations can arise where one civ conquers a whole continent and then military victories aren't a good choice anymore imo. so if you play to win I believe that you should maybe try a peaceful victory so i. e. Spacerace or Cultural. I'm not sure if this will help you in your current situation though as you describe that Lizzy has 3 times as many cities as you have which again speaks for you not expanding aggressively enough from my guessing, one civ that is bigger than you can happen but several usually speak for a general problem imo. . What would make you safe from Lizzy dowing you would be if you could get her to pleased so i. e. gift her a tech that has no military value or that many other civs already have so that she's likely to get anyhow.
There's also the trick to beg gold from civs to get 10T lasting peace-treaties. Beginng has an 80% chance to suceed in civ after 24T if the amount isn't too great and the first beg has a 100% chance unless begging too much gold again.

What might help you in war would be to build more siege-units so i. e. 1 siege unit for every 2 killer units. Suicide those siege units against the defenders and use their ability to bombard the cultural defenses. I somehow still suspect that there might be a production-problem so you i. e. not diverting enough resources towards building units and maybe not using the whip often enough.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

My cities were able to churn out combat units ever 2 or 3 turns, and I had 3 (4 if you count the one making galleys) producing them. I was able to make about 20 in no time.

And I only use the whip if decreasing the city's population will actually remove the unhappy face. And once, I whipped a wonder to completion, only to find out next turn that someone else completed it and I only got like 20 gold or something like that for killing off 3 of my capital's population (I was trying to build the pyramids btw).

And yeah, even though I chose the 'fractal' map, for some reason everyone's on islands. My island has me and ragnar, to my west is a large continent mostly dominated by the british (I think she took a huge amount of territory form the greeks at some point), with the greeks sitting in a tiny pocket on the opposite side of the island. To my east is a somewhat smaller continent that seems to be dominated by the Japanese. As for where the russians and aztec are, I honestly don't know. I've already encircled the globe, and the Japanese at the very least rule the entire shoreline of their continent.

And I admit, I'm not sure what this will accomplish. I just decided I needed more cities. I didn't see myself winning with what I had, and looking around my own area, I saw no good place to put another city. Right now, I'm hoping for a 2050 victory, or possibly a domination victory. I may eventually take all of tokugawa's territory. If that doesn't satisfy the victory condition, I could take Ragnar and maybe the other two if I could ever figure out where on earth they are. And I could possibly go for a space race victory. All those extra cities I'm guessing will help with research.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

You know, an AI once launched a naval invasion against me in a PBEM and actually conquered a city of mine. Granted, it was mostly my own arrogance that led to my downfall, because one, I assumed the AI wouldn't declare ln me since it was already in a war against someone, and two, I didn't assume literally all of my units in the battle for the city Stalin landed next to would die. Unfortunately I didn't have enough ships to kill his fleet in one go, so I chipped away at his naval stack and only killed it completely after he had already dropped off a stack of I think 5 cannons, 2 Grenadiers and 2 Rifles or something like that. Maybe four cannons and one more Grenadier? I distinctly remember most of the units being cannons, but I also think it might have been five clean up units instead of four. At any rate, he chipped away at the defenses one turn and attacked the next. Due to the unfortunate geographic layout of my island (it was on an Archipelago map) most reinforcements took too long to arrive in time, especially since first his fleet forked three of my cities so I couldn't be sure where he would land until it was too late, so basically I had to spend money on upgrading the local garrison and cold whipping an Infantry. Even those plus a small number of reinforcements were only enough to equal Stalin's number of non-cannon units. The sad thing is, I could have cold whipped a knight (no need for Military Tradition on Archipelago and didn't have the pop for something ) next round, right before the actual atack and fall the city, but in my hubris I expected Stalin to bombard another round and that he would lose at least one of the non siege fights, but instead he straight up captured it.

In my defense, it was a PBEM, so I was always more concerned about human threats than AI ones, so the attack came from where I least expected it. I have since reconquered the city and made seizable gains of Russian territory, but the war is still far from over, as I will make him pay for what he did to Pinkie Pie.

Incidentally I named all my cities in that game after My Little Pony characters.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Okay then, I just got blindsided.

Ended the war with tokugawa, because the war weariness was getting too high. A few turns later, stalin declared war on montezuma (who literally has the lowest score in the game), who for w/e reason immedietly declared war on me the next turn. He took one of my cities before I could get my troops over there, and razed most of the improvements around one of my cities. I managed to kill his pathetic outdated army, but then Ragnar suddenly decided to declare war on me.

So yeah, in just a few turns lost one of my cities, got another razed, and now my islandmate is assaulting me too. I'm not too worried about montezuma, his army was pathetic and I killed it in one turn once I actually got units over there, and he's way off on another continent (I got a world map from tokugawa in exchange for peace, apparently monte and stalin are both on their own continents). And btw, I've been making friends with stalin since well he is at war with montezuma, so I was hoping he could get him off my back.

Right now, I'm trying to mass a new army on my main continent (the army I used against tokugawa is overseas, and monte decided to decimate all the galleys so now I can't transport them, and besides, toku may declare war on me again).

I'm not sure if I can handle Ragnar or not, but I haven't seen too many of his troops yet, and I have pretty much all of my cities massing cavalry and grenadiers. Oh, and I was thinking it was about time to conquer him anyway. He's way ahead of me in score, and besides I want those gems he stole from me. And I'm technically short a city now too.

 

[elitetroops]

You should stop looking at the score, that is no measure for how well you are doing. Early on if you have the same amount of cities as the opponent, or even slightly more, they should be ahead of you in score. As Seraiel said, score mostly comes from population. The AI doesn't whip enough, leading to larger cities and more score. You should whip more than the AI, which keeps you below the AI with the same amount of cities on the score board, until you have a great tech advantage.

Only whipping when there are angry faces to whip out is doing it wrong. The main reason you whip is for production. It's the most efficient form of production until the late game. Managing happiness is just a bonus.

And btw. install BTS. It doesn't make games longer, only more enjoyable.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Okay, this is getting stupid. The AI is cheating. He just summoned a whole fleet of boats, in the middle of the ocean. There is no place they could've come from, its literally 10 spaces out in the middle of the ocean, no land anywhere nearby, and suddenly it just materializes out of nowhere and takes out my galleys, which means that my main army is now stranded. And for some reason I can't get more than .01% chance of winning against his ships, even though mine are higher level and are exactly the same kind of ship.

This is rediculous. And btw, he's slaughtering me on my main continent because my cities suddenly can't churn out units anymore than 3-5 turns.

And for some reason, Ragnar decided to put a city on that 1 by 2 island that has NO resources on it. It may not be a good city, but its proving to be a good vantage point for him. He keeps churning out ships over there and I can't do anything about it.

Yeah, I lost this game, again. And btw, I actually own more cities than Ragnar, I explored his territory while I was trying to convert him. There is no logical reason why he should be ahead of me in score, nor should he be able to churn out max-level units every single turn. I'm sitting here fighting a war where I can only get at best a 30% chance of winning a fight, but most of the time its .01% as usual. This doesn't even make sense. How in the living hell could have that much of an advantage on me???? I literally have every single military upgrade I could get, from civics, buildings, the heroic epic, two academies, and still I can't make units as good as his. And even if my units are the same level, for w/e reason his still have a 80% chance of winning. Oh, and his units can obviously teleport. Besides materializing out of nowhere, I had a whole line of ships blocking his path to my galleys, between his pathetic 2 ships and my galleys, instantaneously they appeared next to my galleys and slaughtered them, even though they were well out of movement range even if I didn't have a line of 10 ships blocking his path.

I'm starting to remember why I quit this game 6 years ago. The AI fing cheats and you can't do sh!t about it.

 

[elitetroops]

Sorry, but you must be missing something very fundamental about how this game works, because what you describe is not this game at all. Are you perhaps fighting with wounded units to get those odds? Do you understand how defensive bonuses and different promotions work?

Also, Heroic Epic and Military Academies don't make your units stronger or give them any upgrades. They only allow the city to produce them faster.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Yes, I heal my units, even though it suddenly takes 10 turns for them to do so. I literally have 90% of my army just sitting around waiting to heal. And I have read what actually determines that percentage score; there's absolutely no logical reason that he should have that much of a chance against me, under any circumstance, and yet the AI always always does no matter what. Even if they have no upgrades at all on them they still have a .01% chance of losing.

Oh, and the AI can also apparently train 20 units at once, since he keeps summoning a huge swarm of 20 ships now that one pathetic island every single turn.

Yeah, I'm done for. Guess I need to stick of chieftain, since obviously warlord is futile. Really game design. Chieftain is a joke, warlord is impossible. Seriously, what were they thinking when they made this game????

 

[slengtorm]

You're doing many, many things wrong, but we don't know exactly what they are because we can't see your game.

What you need to do is:

1. Calm down. This game is winnable. Warlord can be easily beaten and so can higher levels once you learn what to do.

2. Install Beyond the Sword and patch it to 3.19.

3. Make a new thread in the Strategy & Tips forum called "Help me beat Warlord" or the like. Start a new BTS game with the following settings: Warlord difficulty, Pangaea map type, Standard map size, Normal speed. When the game starts, take a screenshot of your Settler and second unit. DO NOT MOVE THEM. Post the screenshot and the game's save file in the first post with something like "This is my start, what do you guys think?"

4. Wait. Don't make any moves or decisions whatsoever until a few players post their thoughts on the start.

5. Take some people's recommendations. Say what you're going to do, play 5 or 10 turns, post the new screenshot and save.

6. Repeat. Take your time. Trust the experienced players.

7. Learn. Win Warlord.

8. Watch as you quickly become capable of winning on Prince.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

How can something like that even work? What if some civilization suddenly pops up asking me for a tech trade, or to pay tribute or something like that?

Oh, and one thing I've noticed about warlords: civs aren't willing to trade tech, ever, at least until its horribly outdated. I mean, the only things I'm seeing up for grabs right now is like iron-age tech I skipped over. I see more modern things that I don't have, but they 'aren't willing to trade those away yet'. I'm guessing they will only trade you tech once its become obsolete for them.