What I have learned so far

[Hambil]

I have not yet won a game, but to be fair I started at a high difficulty. I am getting close. Here is what I have learned. Feel free to nit-pick, question, praise, and otherwise discuss the points I make.

Early game MUST haves
1. Stone within reach of first of second city
2. Buddhism
3. The Oracle

I believe if you miss any of those things you have lost.

Mid game MUST haves
1. Found as many religions as possible. Buddhism, Hinduism, Jewdism, Christianity and Taoism are usually doable. Confusism and Islam are tough.
2. Liberalism
3. Switch to no-state religion
4. Spread all the religions you founded to all your citys and build all possible religious buildings.

Late game MUST haves
1. Large cities that can support multiple specialists. You cannot stay ahead of research without specialists.
2. Oil and Coal - if you don't have them find them and create a colony by them. Without them you cannot win.
3. If you are after a conquest victory it is nearly impossible if you don't build The Pentagon.

That's all for now... fire away.

 

[Roland Johansen]

In civilization, there are no must-haves. In my present immortal level game, I don't have stone in my first or second or third city (but I have it in my fourth). I didn't found any religion (thus no buddhism) and was too late for the oracle. The game is not going perfect, but I still think I have a good chance to win. As I have won many games without many of your must-haves.

Of course all of your must-haves are great to have, but they aren't must-haves.

Edit: By the way: Welcome to civfanatics!

 

[podraza]

The forum members are going to say to you:

1. Hi and welcome!

2. You are wrong on all counts.

You don't NEED much of anything to win at this game. There are workarounds and alternatives for pretty much anything you lack. All you do need is some experience and a solid understanding of game mechanics as delivered to you by the knowledgeable people at this forum (I am not among them). I'm not sure if you learn more by playing at high levels or low. I personally played at low levels until I could beat them convincingly, and then I moved up.

 

[Tatran]

First, welcome to this forum.

Second, I have to disagree with all the must haves.
They are handy to have, but you'll have to learn to start/live
without them.

 

[Hambil]

Well, for my favored style of game - which is turtling (building and making friends until I have the muscle to conquer in a massive late game war - or can win with a cultural or domination victory), these seem to be must haves. I am sure there are many ways to play the game, but, this is the only way I've ever been able to consistantly get ahead early on score, and stay ahead. It took me a while to figure out that specialists where why the computer players would slowly pass me on score in mid game.

 

[Hambil]

First, welcome to this forum.

Second, I have to disagree with all the must haves.
without them.

While 'no you are wrong' is a great ego boost for me, perhaps some examples of other methods would be even better

 

[Tatran]

If you play each new game this way, civ4 would become very
boring.

 

[Roland Johansen]

While 'no you are wrong' is a great ego boost for me, perhaps some examples of other methods would be even better

First of all, there are no must-haves and thus you shouldn't get fixated on certain elements of the game to the exclusion of all others. This game is far too complicated to give a full strategy guide in a few posts. However, I think I can mention two distinct elements that I didn't find in your first post and are usually used extensively in my own games (especially during the important early-mid game). They are however not the ultimate guide to victory or something like that.

1) poprushing. Go for bronze working relatively early in the game and use any excess population (those that can't be kept happy or healthy) for a production boost with the slavery civic. Also copper can be useful for axemen and forest chopping can be valuable for its source of production.

2) cottage spamming. Go for pottery relatively early in the game and start developing cottages early. Cottages that have been build early will have developed into towns (if you work them inside your various cities) by mid-game and will help your science development enormously.

These are just examples of strategic decisions and not all-important victory conditions.

 

[podraza]

While 'no you are wrong' is a great ego boost for me, perhaps some examples of other methods would be even better

How to teach Civilization is something I have thought a lot about. Because I have only recently learned it myself. I have only recently reached that Nirvana-like position of appreciating what "situation-specific" really means and why even "general" strategies don't make for good advice. If this forum has one deficiency, it is that no experienced player has, to my knowledge, written the definitive communication of this idea effectively to the new players. Maybe it cannot be communicated, maybe it must come from experience. I imagine this is true.

I always recomend that new players micromanage their workers and tiles to start. I played Civilization (3) for a year while automating both. I was never able to rise above Noble difficulty in that game and stood in dumbstruck awe of the players who could win at the higher levels. I was a poor player and I didn't know why. Eventually I learned it was because the automation is a kiss of death in any game and that if I wanted to play well, I needed to learn to micromanage. So when I bought 4, I made it a mission to learn micromanagement as part of learning the new game. It has had a tremendous impact on my game. (I now play Monarch/Emperor)

Micromanaging tiles will teach you everything you'll need to know about the 3 basic elements of Civ: commerce, hammers, and food.

Every other game concept is just one or another gimmick to increase these 3. The Oracle is just a gimmick to increase those 3, as is a grocer or hinduism or anything and everything else. And the 3 are interchangeable. A gimmick helping food production will also help hammers and commerce in roundabout ways. If you have lots of one and little of another, there are ways to convert them into each other. This is why you never need to do any one thing. Because there is always another way to get more commerce, hammers, and food. And if you have more commerce, hammers and food than the other guy, you will (should) win the game.

So I would say micromanage your workers and you tiles for an entire game. And if you don't know what you're doing at first, read the materials here. Read the guide on terrain. What you do in your game doesn't matter too much, so long as you are micromanaging. Try the turtling. And do it on Warlord or Noble, so that you needn't fear enemy invasions too badly.

 

[patagonia]

To follow on from what Roland Johansen just said:

Stone's only important if you're building wonders made from it and even then, in the time it's taken you to hook it up, you could have chopped most of it anyway (stone wonders made of wood - one of civ's little quirks, to go with spaceship parts made of wood...). A strategic resource such as iron, copper or horses is often far more useful in the short to mid term unless you're basing your entire early game strategy around getting the pyramids.

Religions are nice for the happy, but you certainly don't need all of them and you don't need to found them yourself either. Sure, founding them allows you to burn a GP on the shrine and if it's your state religion, gives you LOS into rival cities it's spread to, both of which are nice to have, but there's no reason why you can't let the AI invest the time and effort on that and capture the holy city in a war of expansion later on.

The Oracle gives you a free tech, which can be a huge advantage early in the game if leveraged correctly, but is by no means essential for success. Liberalism is again nice for a free tech midgame, but again, by no means essential to win.

Switching to Free Religion is only worth it if the benefits from doing so (10% research bonus, 1+ happy for each religion in your cities, lessened religious tension diplomatically) outweigh the benefits you're getting from running a state religion (stronger ties diplomatically (it's generally better to have a few good friends and a few enemies than to have everyone ambivalent about you), the production, military or great person generation benefits of the other religious civics, possible gold and research benefits from the Spiral Minaret or University of Sankore). In terms of resources invested in missionaries that would be better spent elsewhere, there's also a law of diminishing returns when it comes to trying to squeeze many religions into one city. The first two or three aren't too difficult, but above that you have greater and greater chance of failure. You'd get greater benefits to wealth and happiness across your whole civilisation by building markets instead.

As already stated, cottages are a popular alternative to specialists for generating commerce (and hence either wealth, research beakers or culture), but you're still best off with large cities able to work as many cottages as possible if you use them instead. Oil and coal are only necessary for warmongering and railroads, neither of which are vital for winning the game by cultural, diplomatic or space routes. If you're pursuing late-game conquest/domination, they're very helpful though. The Pentagon is also a nice bonus, but not really necessary (either vassalage or theocracy will give the same +2XP benefit to start units produced by a barracks at level 3), especially as human players are so much better at waging war than the AI to begin with.

=========================

There's a huge amount of useful information in both this and the strategy articles form about different ways to succeed at cIV, which it's well worth browsing through for more ideas. You'll quickly realise that nothing's a must-have.

Apart from victory

 

[Sisiutil]

I concur with what everyone has said above, especially podraza's insightful comments about the three key production items.

The only things on your list that I really aim for are the Oracle and Liberalism, and even then, I've won games without being first to one or the other or both.

One of the coolest things about this game is that there are so many different ways to attempt victory, and a lot can depend not only the initial settings you control (map type, leader), but also what the game throws at you (map, neighbours). There's no one formula that guarantees success. That's why it's so much fun!

 

[Hambil]

To follow on from what Roland Johansen just said:

Stone's only important if you're building wonders made from it and even then, in the time it's taken you to hook it up, you could have chopped most of it anyway (stone wonders made of wood - one of civ's little quirks, to go with spaceship parts made of wood...).

I don't generally like to chop down forests unless I have to for growth. Forests are very powerful in the late game - with lumbermills and enviromentalism.

Also - early wonders (beyond their obvious bonuses) will generate more early great people, each of which equals a new tech or instant completion of another wonder. Or, lucrative trade missions. All of which push your score and your advantage.

A strategic resource such as iron, copper or horses is often far more useful in the short to mid term unless you're basing your entire early game strategy around getting the pyramids.

In single player games I base my early stratagy on appeasement, trade, and the great wall. This virtually eliminates the need for a military until the 1600s or later.

Religions are nice for the happy, but you certainly don't need all of them and you don't need to found them yourself either.

Founding them yourself denies the computer their benifits. They aren't just nice for the happy, they are great for the happy. A city with 5 temples is not going to have happy issues, plus when you switch to free religion they all generate culture and happiness, not just the state one.

Sure, founding them allows you to burn a GP on the shrine and if it's your state religion, gives you LOS into rival cities it's spread to, both of which are nice to have, but there's no reason why you can't let the AI invest the time and effort on that and capture the holy city in a war of expansion later on.

It's all about staying ahead of the computer players. Otherwise, when you make war you will be facing superior tech forces, and unless you 'cheat' by turning random seed on you are going to have a tough go of it.

The Oracle gives you a free tech, which can be a huge advantage early in the game if leveraged correctly, but is by no means essential for success. Liberalism is again nice for a free tech midgame, but again, by no means essential to win.

Each free tech is 10-30 turns saved, plus the 10-30 turns with that tech to use. And, can give you access to wonders so you can build them before your opponent.

Switching to Free Religion is only worth it if the benefits from doing so (10% research bonus, 1+ happy for each religion in your cities, lessened religious tension diplomatically) outweigh the benefits you're getting from running a state religion (stronger ties diplomatically (it's generally better to have a few good friends and a few enemies than to have everyone ambivalent about you)

The computer WILL war, if you don't have perminant peace turned on. It's only a question of will it war with you, or itself. I always perfer it waring with itself, as both civs advancement will stall dramatically (which is odd because in real history war was a time of great advancements). I perfer to stay friends with everyone, and pick my own war when the time is right.

the production, military or great person generation benefits of the other religious civics, possible gold and research benefits from the Spiral Minaret or University of Sankore).

Are complete outweighed (IMHO) by the ability to have a size 30 city with 10 - 15 specialists.

In terms of resources invested in missionaries that would be better spent elsewhere, there's also a law of diminishing returns when it comes to trying to squeeze many religions into one city.

I've notice the increased failure to spread rate, but it's been nothing but a minor annoyance so far and I've got eight cities with five religions each.

You'd get greater benefits to wealth and happiness across your whole civilisation by building markets instead.

I don't see it as an either/or. I build markets, too.

As already stated, cottages are a popular alternative to specialists for generating commerce (and hence either wealth, research beakers or culture), but you're still best off with large cities able to work as many cottages as possible if you use them instead.

Cottages are great, especially when they make it to Town. Unfortunately they are easily pillaged so if you become dependant on them you can be hurt fairly easily, and they take forever to rebuild.

Oil and coal are only necessary for warmongering and railroads, neither of which are vital for winning the game by cultural, diplomatic or space routes.

In my experience if you don't have destroyers and battleships and the computer does, it will always start a war with you. And it will proceed to pound the crap out of your coastal cities even if it can't mount a land invasion. This is annoying and damaging because it causes a blockade of all water tiles and without oil there is no way to get rid of a destroyer of battleship.

The Pentagon is also a nice bonus, but not really necessary (either vassalage or theocracy will give the same +2XP benefit to start units produced by a barracks at level 3), especially as human players are so much better at waging war than the AI to begin with.

The computer will always build the pentagon if you don't - and by the nature of the game it will be build by your strongest rival. The strategy I outlay (which I admit is only one of many possible ones) is as much about denying the computer as it is getting things for yourself.

 

[mucco]

I don't know what level you're playing, Hambil, but many of the strategies you mentioned won't work in a random game at a mid-to-high level, let's say from monarch on. The Oracle does give you a free tech, yes, but the saved turns are minimal if the tech is useless: the Oracle is most useful when you get an important tech down the priesthood path with it. The famous CoL and CS slingshots are the perfect examples. Let's say you build the oracle and pick... alphabet. What have you gained? The main benefit of this wonder is to discover VERY early expensive techs, not any tech will do.

The Pyramids can be as effective as the Oracle, because you can rushbuild another big wonder with them: the Great Library, for example. These two wonders, if rushed properly, can be an obscene science booster early. Ofter they're almost as powerful as the Oracle itself, provided it can reap the maximum reasonable benefit, that is civil service.

The main downsides of founding many religions are that you deviate from the main economical/military techs, and you fall behind the AIs in tech subsequentially. But founding five or more religions (which is almost impossible at said levels, at least for me ) makes the other AIs have less, so there will be more friendship between them, as they share the same religion. You WILL fail to get at least one religion in most games, and that religions has a good chance to spread to many neighbors.

The "staying ahead" is a dream once the computer players start to have big bonuses, as the levels go up. The human almost always has to climb his way out of the hole where he is at the start of the game. This is why early wars are often a good bet: simply expanding until you meet the other civs' borders won't get you enough land to dominate the economy later in the game.

I don't have Warlords, but I strongly suspect that most AIs will still go for Buddhism 99% of the times. You should aim for that tech only of you start with mysticism, and can work at least one or two 3+ commerce tiles from scratch. Else, your first tech could be completely useless (this has happened to me a lot of times). The first techs are the most critical ones, failing one gets you deeper in the hole of which I spoke before.

There is no must-have resource! There is the best use for each resource, though. Going crazy to get stone in your second city can hamper your economy from the start. Founding a good second city with copper is a better move, since those axemen can go to silly Gandhi who spent his time building the pyramids with that stone, and conquer his empire and pyramids. You have to adapt to the game, there's no fixed strategy.

About war, most of the time it's not luck but skill that influences the fight. The skilled player can win wars without a tech advantage, by simply choosing the best conditions to fight. Defend if forested hills, use promotions wisely, develop some logistic are all things that can improve dramatically our odds. I've seen AW games where the player lost less than 10 units (not counting cats), because of his great skill.

Then, there's no event that can "trigger" a war, except if you refuse tributes or something like that. The AI is not coded to attack when it has battleships: I got some games in which I was spreading my religions via caravels in the 1900s, and that was all of my navy.

Size 30 cities are quite an achievement, but couldn't that city better have been used with cottages instead of grassland farms (which it would likely have if it's that big)? 10 towns is more output than 10 scientists.

And finally, about forests: if you have a 2f/3s at the price of running envorinmentalism for one extra health, you might as well have a workshop and state property. Better civic with a large empire, and more shields. There's no health, but you got hospitals, so who cares?

I hope this helps, good luck with your civ!

 

[patagonia]

You're right when you say that one of the best ways to slow down the advancement of an AI faction is to incite it into a war with another. It's also one of the best ways to keep the AI from declaring war on you, since most factions don't like to be at war on more than one front at a time.

One thing that the strategy you've outlined misses is that religion is the best tool for driving a wedge between the AI for much of the game. By "allowing" the AI to found several of the religions, you create religious tension which is easily pushed into conflict (especially as most AIs will stick to the religion that they've founded unless you make a great effort with missionaries and diplomacy to convince them otherwise). This is especially true on continents maps. If the other continent is one big happy religious (or even secular) block, they're much more likely to have been peacefully tech-trading and be ahead of you by the time contact is made.

The AI is by no means guaranteed to declare war on you if you lack certain units/resources. It tends to base the decision to declare war partly on your relations and partly on the difference between you and it on the power graph (and more modern units contribute more power per unit than older ones do). Leader personality is also a factor. There are some leaders (such as Monty or Alex) who have a tendency to attack based on the power graph alone, and pay scant attention to your relations, but most AIs (even these two if handled well) can be successfully manipulated with a bit of care. By following some of the advice on here, I've had space wins without bothering to build anything more militarily advanced than a longbow. I'd strongly advise looking at aelf's "Emperor Master's Challenge" threads, particularly the first one, for some excellent diplomacy pointers. If your land is being pillaged, there's generally something going wrong with your gameplan somewhere.

I didn't mean to give the impression that the features you regard as "must have's" aren't worthwhile, just point out that there are ways of playing without them, and that just because they're lacking doesn't mean a game is impossible to win.

The only game that seems to be impossible to win (at least so far) is the current Ironman challenge

 

[OceansEleven]

Yeah... a lot of the counts you are wrong on.

For one, it's nearly impossible to have 5 religions. It's just plain hard. Besides, you can't just go straight for Religion Techs... you need other techs.

I agree the Oracle and a Religion REALLY helps... but you don't need them. I build the Oracle to get Metal Casting instead of wasting 50 turns (at that time), and build the Colossus(sp?). I build Stongehenge --> Oracle (if I can) --> Colossus (if I can) ------------> Taj Mahal -----------> Statue of Liberty (again...) --> Pentagon --> All those hit records things --> Three Gorges.

Helps a lot.

You do not need Stone at all. I don't see why you NEED it... What you DO NEED is Copper and or Iron. Iron helps a lot. And if you have a religion, one of your TOP goals should be to spread it to others as much as you can, as well as to your cities. Usually the Shrine thing takes care most of your cities for you.

The computer isn't programmed to ALWAYS wage war. You can always go around it. Big military... good friends... etc etc. Whatever.

You don't need much of anything to win. Just a essential things like resources... cottages... and whatnot.

 

[Sisiutil]

Hambil, you defended your points very ably in your post above. And certainly, in a game as flexible as Civ IV, there are benefits to be reaped from some of your tactics. In some games, if stone is available for the second city to help with the pyramids, go for it. If you want to then run a specialist economy with farms instead of cottages, do that too. You wanna go wonder-crazy? Go wonder-crazy.

However, there's one main reason why everyone's telling you to try some different strategies:

I have not yet won a game

 

[Hambil]

However, there's one main reason why everyone's telling you to try some different strategies:

I have not yet won a game

Hey, I only got the game a week and a half ago, and I started at Monarch. I haven't yet won because I'm a perfectionist and tend to quit a game if I fall too far behind in score - even though I might still have won in the end. Right now I'm totally focused on getting ahead and staying ahead in score for the entire game. But, point taken

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I don't generally like to chop down forests unless I have to for growth. Forests are very powerful in the late game - with lumbermills and enviromentalism.

Get over it.

Early advantages multiply - chopping a forrest is effectively 5 hammers per turn of production, at a time when that basically doubles the production in that city.

Sure, if you found a city in the late game, it may make sense to keep the forrests (buy rushing what you need instead); or to keep the forrests because you need them for long term production (Archipelago, Tiny Islands), or you need them for health (OCC).


Also, unless you are specifically targeting a time victory, ignore the score - it doesn't tell you anything useful about the health of your current situation.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

The only real must have is a decent enough understanding,will-power to shoot for whatever victory you are going for, and the wisdom to know when to go for a secondary strategy in case the original plan didn't work out.

I find the U.N. to be a great secondary win condition, especially when going for a cultural victory.

 

[Wlauzon]

While 'no you are wrong' is a great ego boost for me, perhaps some examples of other methods would be even better

The point is, there IS no right or wrong. What you described works fine - for the map you play, for the way you play, for the level you play, for how many opponents you play against, and about 40 other factors.

But not everyone plays the same, nor is every game the same.

In CIV there is no such thing as "the best way". The best way only applies to some scenarios. Almost none apply to all of them.