What am I doing wrong?

[xBlackWolfx]

Managed to get Monte to **** off. Now I'm continuing my campaign against Ragnar. Speaking of which, he summoned 30 units from that stupid little island, and took one of my largest cities, and razed it to the ground. So yeah, now I'm short two cities, I've fallen to the bottom of the list, and I lost one of the cities I was using to build units. Completely destroyed, 10,000 years work of buildings, a couple wonders, destroyed. All because the AI has way too many advantages.

Right now, I'm trying to take one of Ragnar's cities, which isn't going well since of course as always, he always always always has a .01% chance of losing, no matter how much I bombard or how many times I attack.

As for my other army stranded in toku's territory, I'm trying to get the city I captured to cooperate so I can build a galley from there, and transport those troops to that little island offshore. Hopefully, I can take it and stop the assault on my west coast. Oh, and right after I got Monte to **** off, he built his down stupid little city right on the ruins of the one he razed.

And I can't win a naval battle for . Again, he churns out units faster than I can, and they're always always always maxed out on levels so I can't possibly win. I have no naval presence at all, because he just keeps annihilating any ship I build as soon as it pops out.

I feel like I've slowed down his assault, and he'll talk to me again. But I'm not resting until I take that ****ing gem city. He razed my biggest city to the ****ing ground, he stole that spot from me, so I'm going to raze his piece of **** excuse for a city and put mine there.

Of course, I don't see anyway I can win here. My country's in tatters, war weariness keeps mounting and mounting because I can't get anyone to **** off for more than an instant. My cities are literally all starving to death because I can't get anyone to work (well that, and I have a fleet of hundreds of max-level frigates off shore).

Every single game, everything's going fine until everyone on the entire map, no matter their relationship with me (and no, keeping them 'pleased' does NOT stop them from declaring war on you) suddenly throws everything they have at me until I cave in and DIE BEFORE 1900.

 

[ikotomi]

Your observation that AI's don't trade tech is probably due to the fact that AI tech rate is so slow that the threshold for number of players having the tech before they are willing to trade is not being met. At Warlord difficulty, you should be focusing on optimizing your cities and working the right tiles.

You shouldn't have problems at all in wars. What this shows is you are not building enough units or getting enough of a tech advantage before attacking. The general way to go about fighting is power your research to get a key military tech, and then build the unit en masse before attacking. In times of peace you should be building wealth or research in most cities and then shift into mass production of units when you hit your desired tech.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Well I already had an army, which like I've said a dozen times is stranded on another continent because I can't get any ship to last more than an instant. I'm having to build units as I go here. And despite the obvious cheating, I did manage to fight off his onslaught. Of course, now I can't seem to take any territory back.

I'm just getting sick of this game, since obviously I'm not going to win. Like I said, one of my major cities got razed to the ground, another was razed and built over, so now i only really have 3 cities with which I can build units. The fourth has no production, and the two Japanese cities I took aren't cooperating, one keeps revolting over and over and the other I can't get the citizens to stop whining. And besides that, Ragnar is keeping a huge fleet offshore so I can't work any ocean tiles. Right now, the city's growth has completely stagnated and I can't access like 75% of the tiles around the city.

And as for having people play my game for me, I have a better idea: why doesn't someone just make a video that explain exactly why they're doing what they do as they go along? That would be a lot more time efficient.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

And as for having people play my game for me, I have a better idea: why doesn't someone just make a video that explain exactly why they're doing what they do as they go along? That would be a lot more time efficient.

You mean like Sulla's Let's Play videos?

Really though, chillax. Without screenshots or a savegame of whatever is offending you we have no way to find out what exactly seems to be the problem, as unfortunately not many people speak Whinese. I suspect it's a serious misunderstanding of basic game mechanics on your part.

 

[elitetroops]

yeah, there's a lot of people here who could help you a great deal, but for that to happen you need to stop rambling about general impressions and start giving some facts and asking specific questions. If you are wondering about why you can't win battles, say "my UnitName with promotions X is attacking his UnitName with promotions Y in a city with Z% cultural defenses which Is/IsNot on a hill." Then we can tell you exactly why your plan doesn't work and what you should be doing instead.

And as Imp.K. said, attach a save game to your post here, that would give people a lot of real information to work from.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Okay then, I'll see if I can attach the save file. I did do this years ago, looking through my old posts. Interesting that I had the same problems back then as I do now.

The city where I have a bunch of grenadiers is the one I'm trying to take. However, I'm losing units faster than I can build them, so I was really thinking about calling off the war. And as for where that frigate is of his that keeps owning my ships, I don't know. Like I said, his ships can teleport. I make one, move it north along the coast, then suddenly his ships materialize out of nowhere and kill it.

Anyway, I decided to abandon this game. I'm currently installing the beyond the sword expansion.

 

[Pangaea]

Ships can't teleport (except in some unique scenarios, but those don't apply here). However, if you have galleys and you're up against Frigates, it's no wonder you're losing ships left, right and centre. Frigates have more movements points too, so although you don't see them one turn, they can kill units the next.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Actually I've been building frigates to kill his frigates. They always have a 33% chance of winning through, no idea why. I've noticed that the coast apparently gives a +10% bonus, but I have that even when we're out in the middle of the ocean.

Oh and btw, the expansion just finished installing. Thing told me it would take 6 hours. It only took 3 1/2 I think.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Imp. Knoedel:

That comment about "Whinese" ... . xBlackWolfx is obviously having troubles and it's just the most common assumption of many players that the AI is cheating, ofc. we know that it isn't but that it follows strict rules which we know. Negative comments like that don't help at all except that they cause further frustration and make new players quit. We know exactly that CIV is a very complicated game and that the manuals are ridiculous because they don't explain anything necessary or even lead to doing wrong moves and the suggestions about what to do obviously are so idiotic that it's no wonder that players following them fail.

@ xBlackWolfx:

The AI doesn't cheat, it gets production and research bonuses on the higher levels but it cannot i. e. summon a fleet of ships somewhere. The AI getting bonuses is necessary because even a smart and good AI is by far not as capable or skilled as a human is.

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

This is what I found when looking at the save:

1. It's 1914. This is very late-game so the errors lie in the long game that happened before.
2. The capital (Madrid) has a huge amount of buildings, most are good buildings though. The Colosseum wouldn't have been necessary, the University of Sankore is not a good wonder so superflous, the GW is arguable, the capital also has the Oracle and the Mids, this basically showed that xBlackWolfx tried to build every single Wonder possible.
@ xBlackWolfx: I wrote that Wonders aren't necessary for anything.
3. The following cities also all have basically every building that's available. Again unnecessary or even bad Wonders (the ToA) , one city that is new is building a Granary though so xBlackWolfx listened towards the advice of building Granaries first. The general mistakes are building too many buildings though and this explains the following:
4. The army xBlackWolfx has consists out of 12 units. @ [x]xBlackWolfx[/b]: Next time build less Wonders and less unnecessary buildings, you could have a 100+ unit army at that time and then fighting against Tokugawa would be easy.
I can't explain why the army has Macemen and XBows but generally Cavalries are far better units so those should get prefered when they're available.
5. The cities have mostly Farms or Mines, only very few Cottages. Some Lumbermills (@ xBlackWolfx: Lumbermills are bad improvements, better chop the Forest and build a Workshop, Cottage or Farm) .
Few Cottages explains the experience of the AIs researching too fast, basically xBlackWolfx is researching too slow. This could have easily been guessed but what may excuse xBlackWolfx or may explain the choice of Farms could be that the land is mostly Plains. The better option ofc. would have been to keep cities small and simply ignore those Plains, build a large army via the whip and conquer all opponents before 1914AD.
6. Not a single city has a whip-timer so elitetroops and me guessed right with writing that there's a production problem or that whipping the cities only for is too seldomly.
Someone else should give advice on this.
7. The combination of oppponents is ugly. The opponents are the most possible agressive AIs (Montezuma, Ragnar, Tokugawa, Stalin etc. ) and then there's Lizzy who claimed almost a complete continent and is teching away.
@ xBlackWolfx: Lizzy is on the same continent as Alexander, those two should be at war with each other. I didn't check because I know that there are several options to get one AI to war with another one because the opponents I mentioned are very aggressive war-AIs that can be bribed against basically anybody and that even at low diplo-stances while the opponent may even be cautious or pleased. You need to make sure that the AIs are at war with each other as I already wrote, AIs being at war tech slower and they hurt each other and by that get weakened making it a lot easier for you to attack later.
8. The economy is completely overbuilt. His empire has almost no deficit at 100% which is due to the low maintenance on warlord but also the high amount of Banks and Markets.
@ xBlackWolfx: You could get xx by trading resources towards the other AIs and also have 600 in the bank. In CIV many players run a high deficit so it's best to have the slider at 100% all of the time and then try to get by various possible means, one I already mentioned, other ones would be tech-trade or building Wealth.

I hope that it's ok now.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

My army did have conquistadors, but they all got killed conquering those two cities. The army I have on tokugawa's island are just the survivors. I couldn't transport them over, and I didn't have the money to upgrade them anyway. I've mostly been building grenadiers to counter his riflemen (he was using a lot offensively for some reason). And I haven't had much luck with the calvary. I did over the past few games, but right now, not so much. Probably bc of all the riflemen.

And when I first met Elizabeth, she was already at war with Alexander, infact the first thing she asked of me was to join her in war against him, even though I had no idea where on earth he was at the time. They seemed to play nice throughout the rest of the game though. Didn't really care, not like Alexander was a threat to me and thus far Elizabeth seemed to like me. Then again, so did Ragnar at one point.

And uh, I could have over a hundred units? I would think the game would crash if I did that, or at the very least the maintenance for them all would be overwhelming.

And how am I supposed to use the whip when my population is low? It seems that the population has to be at least 6 for me to build anything with the whip! I've run into that problem a few times trying to hurry things up.

And yeah, my cities don't specialize in anything, thus why they have buildings for everything. Science, commerce (had quite a few cities with huge commerce tiles, particularly that one surrounded by 3 dye tiles I think). And well, I didn't want to hack down my forests because in the last game forests were literally the only source of hammers for my capital. After I hacked all them down, my capital only had one hammer the rest of that game. It did give me a lot of gold though, not like it made any real difference in the end. Same old story, every AI suddenly turned on me and swarmed my tiny little kingdom with a ridiculous number of units.

 

[Pir Lan Tota]

On Gameplay

- Try switching to marathon and large or huge maps. This gives more living room and it takes longer, e.g. each unit has more use (you dont end up sprinting through the ages).

- Turn off Tech Brokering. You can still trade techs, but only those you invent yourself. So you sell Meditation to an AI, that AI cant sell it on, as he/she didnt invent it. Also, sell techs a lot. Meditation is about 500 science points. If you sell it for 100g to 10 enemies, all 10 will like you better, because they made an awesome deal (more that 400g under the actual worth of the tech), but you end up with 1000g, which you can burn through researching more techs.

Start Location: Get a good start location, meaning 2 or 3 early food sources, forest (no jungle) and some hills. Early food sources are Fish or farm-foods, dont take Animal Husbandry foods, they take to long to unlock, instead press ESC and select regenerate map.

- Leader: Play Manu Mansu + Netherlands (unrestricted leaders).

My starting moves (on marathon) - Fishing start
- Use your warrior/scout to scout and build 2 fishing boats (if you have 2 fish food). Time it that your second fishing boat is done exactly at the point where your city grows to 3 people. Now build 3 workers.

- Techwise, tech the following: Mining -> Bronze Working -> Mysticism

- Once you have Mysticism, you should have 3 workers (remember, on marathon it takes 9 turns to chop forest, giving you 60 hammers for worker, CHOP THAT FOREST )

- Use your 3 workers to Chop Stonehenge. This will take care of your border pops initially.

- Build a warrior, then build Warrior -> Settler -> Worker and take a couple more city spaces

For None Fishing start
- Build a scout and warrior, then build your fishing boats. Time it that your warrior is done the second you invent fishing, then do above.




On Warfare, this might help

- Build stacks (eg keep your combat units together)
- Early age (Bronze working and Iron working, so pre Macemen), build a stack that consists of 2 Spearman (Combat 1 + Medic) and 8 Axemen (Combat 1 + Shock). Add 10 Catapults (City Raiders) to it (You need construction). This stack is very difficult to defeat, as long as you keep to defensive ground, e.g. Hills and forests.

- Bombard the culture defense away, the turn after it hits 0%, throw in all your catapults, even if your axemen can already win battles at 99%, throw in your catapults first. Every battle they win, gives them XP and you can make them better City Raiders.

- Dont give your catapults Bombard or stack damage upgrades, better to bombard a turn longer and have catapults that generically win battles.

- Fight slowly, take a city, heal up, move to next. Defend captured cities with 2 or 3 units. Once a captured city is 5 or 6 spaces away from the front line, you can reduce defenders to 1.

- Build Courthouses everywhere. Whip them in conquered Cities....the less people in a city, the happier they are

Once you have gotten yourself a little empire, go straight for the steel tech. That gives you CANNONS, the tech that will allow you to dominate the middle ages of the game up to rifleman, the AI wont have a good counter for them.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

@ Imp. Knoedel:

That comment about "Whinese" ...

I thought it was clever.

Pir Lan Tota, building Stonehenge is just about the opposite of optimal play. Also Marathon/large? Really? Sure, it makes the game easier, but it also drags more and isn't exactly standard. Epic I could kind of see, but Marathon just doesn't scale well at all.

 

[Pir Lan Tota]

Pir Lan Tota, building Stonehenge is just about the opposite of optimal play.

Maybe on smaller maps its not that great, but on Large/Huge its awesome. Also, remember it gives you Great Priest points at the cost of 1 settler (Stonehenge costs 360 hammers), on Large/Huge, you should aim for 6 to 9 early cities.

On small, yea dont bother. On Large/Huge, I would always go Stonehenge. Get that early priest for Holy City or popping tech.

Bit like Great Light, the larger the map, the more awesome the wonder becomes.

 

[Tatran]

Only 3 people looking at the save and nobody writing a comment speaks books.

(re-)Installing Beyond The Sword doesn't require Warlords, only civ4 vanilla.
Also, without the installation of Warlords you can't play a civ4 Warlords game.

 

[Gator Country]

@xBlackWolfx

Have you installed the BTS expansion yet? If you have and you're ready to start improving your game, follow slengtorm's advice upthread, which I'm just going to quote here -

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.

When you start your game, try to get a spot with at least one good food resource (irrigated corn is the best), a decent number of green freshwater tiles, and at least two or three hills in your capital's BFC. Don't be afraid to regenerate your map if the script gives you a really crappy start (lots of flat brown tiles, tundra/ice, desert, mountains, jungle, no food or water, etc.). If it has more food or a couple of luxury/commerce resources as well, so much the better, but the most important thing is food.

Post your thread in Tips & Strategy, post your screens and your save file, and wait for advice. When you do update your progress, you have to be more specific (we didn't even know you were playing Isabella until Seraiel opened your save file in the 29th post to this thread). Write stuff down if necessary - things like your build order, your tech order, AIs you've met and when you met them, etc.). Save your game frequently, so you can go back and try something else when you do make a mistake.

Above all, relax. Everyone here was a newcomer to Civ at one time (I'm still learning to win consistently on Prince myself, so I'm kind of wet behind the ears, too ). It's a complex game with all kinds of different ways to skin the cat, and the only way you're going to get better at it is to take your time and play, and heed other peoples' advice.

 

[Seraiel]

Start Location: Get a good start location, meaning 2 or 3 early food sources, forest (no jungle) and some hills. Early food sources are Fish or farm-foods, dont take Animal Husbandry foods, they take to long to unlock, instead press ESC and select regenerate map.

- Leader: Play Manu Mansu + Netherlands (unrestricted leaders).

My starting moves (on marathon) - Fishing start
- Use your warrior/scout to scout and build 2 fishing boats (if you have 2 fish food). Time it that your second fishing boat is done exactly at the point where your city grows to 3 people. Now build 3 workers.

- Techwise, tech the following: Mining -> Bronze Working -> Mysticism

- Once you have Mysticism, you should have 3 workers (remember, on marathon it takes 9 turns to chop forest, giving you 60 hammers for worker, CHOP THAT FOREST )

- Use your 3 workers to Chop Stonehenge. This will take care of your border pops initially.

- Build a warrior, then build Warrior -> Settler -> Worker and take a couple more city spaces

For None Fishing start
- Build a scout and warrior, then build your fishing boats. Time it that your warrior is done the second you invent fishing, then do above.

Excuse this honesty plz, but this opening is horrible even on the settings you mentioned (and minor correction, the leader is called "Mansa Musa" or also "The Tech Whore" ) . The point about Stonehenge is, that those resources are too expensive too early and early are worth more than later ones. If you i. e. build 4 Monuments over 4 cities but therefore build Settlers in the capital that's way better than Stonehenge and once you have a religion you have the great possibility to get borderpops by the religion and a Missionary easily pays for himself when running OR and building i. e. a Forge. Also 3 Workers and especially that early is way too much, you aren't expanding in the beginning, you can get much better if you try this opening which is the opening I play in most of my normal games nowadays:

1. Tech Agri (if Farm resource) or AH (if animal resource) . Tech Hunting before AH for the 20% research bonus if having Deers and maybe if starting with Ivory. If Ivory is the only early happiness resource i. e. then Hunting is good but not for the tile-improvement but mainly for the Happiness, the tile is as strong with a Farm as it's with a Camp.

2. (A step I personally don't play often because in HoF gaming one plays without Barbs but just for completeness) : Tech AH (unlocks Writing) . If finding Horses, settle them to defend against Barbs, if no Horses available, tech BW.

Other option: Tech BW, if Copper is available settle it, if not AH for Horses, if yes you can decide about TW + Pottery.

Neither of the above is necessarily better, having BW allows for more production and Cottages are definitely needed if not having any early but with a single Gold or Gems already taking the short way towards Writing can get so early Alpha that one can get all techs one skipped "for free" .

Best option: Fogbust the land with Warriors so that Barbs cannot spawn, decide how you can reach Alpha the earliest moment possible, best way is usually via TW + Pottery because then the Workers can build Roads and Granaries are also nice to have but AH has the possibility for a Chariot-rush (viable on any difficulties below Deity or also on Deity if your name is Pollina or Tachywaxon ) and with having i. e. Pigs in the capital-BFC going AH again can be better.

3. Build Worker, then Warriors 'til size 3 (or SH if you start with Mysticism and play without Barbs but only for Failgold! ) , build Settler, Settler, Settler, Settler. Improve only 1-3 tiles around each city with your single Worker and grab land! Once having 5 cities build as many Workers as you need and REX towards more cities should there any land still be available or depending on strategy (Deity-strategy) .

Strategy for lower levels: same beginning, build only 2 Settlers then 2nd Worker, if having gone BW build 2nd Worker after 1st Settler already so Workers earlier Settlers later and depending on how much the Workers can do Workers again earlier.

---------

Fishing starts are very suboptimal because needing to build Workboats and needing to have Fishing slows down by a lot. Workers multiply through their actions by time, Workboats are expensive and 1-time uses.

On Warfare, this might help
- Dont give your catapults Bombard or stack damage upgrades, better to bombard a turn longer and have catapults that generically win battles.

Bombardement promotions are the most valuable promotions for Siege because they can double the effectiveness of the weapon and bombarding is what takes the most time and in that time AIs may whip defenders. Losing 1-2 Catapults more is better than not using Accuracy, the best ofc. is to have an ideal mix out of many Accuracy Siege (up to Cannons, from Cannons onwards Accuracy is wayne) and a few CR2 Sieges.

- Build Courthouses everywhere. Whip them in conquered Cities....the less people in a city, the happier they are

Courthouses are almost the most useless building in CIV and that from a Deity-level perspective. They cost 4 pop, for that you could get 2 Elephants. 2 Elephants get you a city, that's 150 . The city produces more than the Courthouse saves = double win. There's also the possibility to work a Mine and produce Wealth for an instant benefit. Imo. Courthouses make sense very very late game but only enough for the FP and only on very large maps or right before Corporations (or slightly earlier if ORG) .

Build Granaries and units. If you build many units out of one city build a Forge and build a Barracks. Everything apart from that is fully situation so depends on a whole list of things like i. e. the victory one pursues, the target one wants to attack or also the time / era in which the game is but summing up all those things that lead towards a building being a good decision or the building being partly or fully useless would make a whole guide. ^^

 

[xBlackWolfx]

What I'd like to know is, if I do build 100 units, what do I do with them once they become outdated? I don't see myself having the money to upgrade all of them to up-to-date units. I mean, I struggle do that with 5. And as you've seen, most of my cities are being guarded by archers, because I just couldn't pay to promote them.

And just so we know, the army I had invade tokugawa's territory originally had 25 units in it, mostly conquistadors which all failed spectacularly. I'm finding it annoying that there's units that get a bonus against melee and mounted, but none against ranged (unless you count the 'pinch' promotion).

And I am thinking about doing the forum thing. I don't know if it would actually help me learn, since from what I've seen people normally don't explain why you should do something.

 

[Gator Country]

What I'd like to know is, if I do build 100 units, what do I do with them once they become outdated? I don't see myself having the money to upgrade all of them to up-to-date units. I mean, I struggle do that with 5. And as you've seen, most of my cities are being guarded by archers, because I just couldn't pay to promote them.

And just so we know, the army I had invade tokugawa's territory originally had 25 units in it, mostly conquistadors which all failed spectacularly. I'm finding it annoying that there's units that get a bonus against melee and mounted, but none against ranged (unless you count the 'pinch' promotion).

And I am thinking about doing the forum thing. I don't know if it would actually help me learn, since from what I've seen people normally don't explain why you should do something.

There's other factors involved as well. For instance, Tokugawa is Protective (PRO) and Aggressive (AGG). That means his offensive and (especially) his defensive units get promotions right out of the box. PRO gives archery and gunpowder units Drill I (yet another first strike chance on top of an archer's freebie) and City Garrison I (20% extra city defense), and cuts production time of walls and castles in half. Put that city on a hill, add in cultural defenses, and you've got one very, very tough nut to crack if you're going to capture it. You need to take this into account and substantially increase the size of your stack, pillage improved tiles to try and draw defenders out of the city so they lose their bonuses, or wait for much more powerful units. Or go find an easier target - look for his smaller, less well defended cities, capture two or three of those, then sue for peace (or get him to capitulate if you have Feudalism and thus can vassal other civs).

(And don't even get me started on Sitting Bull - if you can't wipe him off the map with an early rush, he's more than likely going to stick around until you get to infantry, and even then it's going to be a long, tough fight).

If you've set up your economy well and are running it properly, you should have enough gold to upgrade those old units, maybe not all at once, but a few at a time. Turn your research slider down to 0% for a few turns, build up your gold, and upgrade. If all else fails, and the old units don't have any promotions of their own, delete them as you build more modern ones.

I really do urge you to try posting saves, updates and your thoughts on the forum; as long as you're asking for advice nicely and taking it when appropriate, I think you'll find lots of folks who are more than willing to explain things to you.

 

[xBlackWolfx]

Would I have to post screenshots or could I just upload the save? Attaching images is such a hassle.

 

[Gator Country]

Would I have to post screenshots or could I just upload the save? Attaching images is such a hassle.

It's a bit of a hassle, but screens are very, very helpful. With them, we can look inside your cities and see how you're managing them, see your surrounding terrain to suggest good spots to settle new cities, get a look at what your AI neighbors are doing, see your tech path and progress, etc.

The saves are nice to add because some folks will download and open them, and some may even "shadow" you, playing the save and posting updates to show you what they did. But not everyone will, and the screen grabs will encourage more players to stop by, take a peek, and maybe drop some more advice.

The most important thing to show when asking for help is willingness to learn. Taking the time to post some screenshots of your game will go a long way toward showing that.