Where to go from here?

[Orbit of Glass]

Hello. As you may have noticed, I'm new to the forums. I've been playing Civ 4 since it came out, although not seriously, and I'm still bad at it, compared to what appears average. After reading strategy articles, I figured out some points where I'd been going badly wrong (commerce/research/gold relationship anyone?) and decided to try and get better.

So, armed with tips from the war academy, today I tried a Noble game as Qin, continents, which I've done a few times before but gave up on after just being forced into a steady decline. Yes, yes, I can't beat Noble. Feel free to laugh. This time, I fared better than average, mostly due to a decent start, lots of flood plains. Until Suryavarman invaded neighbouring Arabia, bashed it to the ground and took the Hindu holy city, gaining a huge cash boost and putting that towards tech, which passed mine in a couple hundred years, and he was researching rifling at the same speed it took me to get printing press.

The background to this was my ownership of eight cities, three grabbed from barbarians, which gave me production and commerce advantage, putting me in first place, admittedly only two nations had been discovered at that time. Unfortunately the maintanence costs absolutely killed me, and as the game went on my research was gradually lowered until it hit about 50%. Although they went to war with one another, both Hindu nations to the north were making threatening moves towards us Confucian heathens and our puny military, and I had to give away some tech whilst I frantically built knights. This was too risky for me and I later converted to Hinduism... not wanting to give Suryavarman the satisfaction of yet more money from that monster shrine, I didn't spread Hinduism to all my cities, which was probably a bad idea as I lost all the happiness bonuses.

So, now I'm crawling through Renaissance whilst others are moving towards Industrial, and I see no prospects.

After looking through some games here, it seems to me that score is nice but it really doesn't matter, it's expected that one will have a mediocre position for some or even most of the game. (is this right?) Maybe it's an offshoot of playing chieftain/warlord/settler difficulty, but not being in first place crushes my morale, so to speak, as I find I can't win if I don't manage to hold it; favoured method of victory is usually space race or domination, so I need the best technology or the most land. I'm peaceful-ish, and I prefer to rely on a small and advanced army to defend my lands, which obviously needs advanced tech, which I don't know how to get in 'higher' difficulty levels.

So at the moment of the encountered three civs two are beating me. Again people might laugh at me for becoming despondent at this point, but I don't see how to win, with no advantages really. I could go conquering, but all I have are lots of knights and a couple of catapults, against Arabia, the only civ I border, which is admittedly feeble, but I don't want to give the Khmer hordes an excuse to come down upon my head. Also, my economy is still in a shambles, so any conquest will just dig a deeper hole.




There are plenty of things I need to improve on (or at least not completely fail at) but I thought I'd start with this game here. Can anyone give me advice on what I should do, or what I should have done differently? It was going so well.

 

[madscientist]

From what I can see, the chance at victory is to get Suryanman to attack Isabella while you take out Saladin.

Some advice
1) You are the same religion as Sury, switch to organized religion to get favorite civic benefit from Sury. Give in to all his requests. Make some lopsided trades if need be to get war techs that Saladin does not have. The bride Sury into fighting Isabella.
2) Take out Saladin as soon as you can. You do not need to capture all cities, but this late they usually are pretty good.
3) Build courthouses and Markets in your cities ASAP. Grocers and banks too.
4) Tech something that Sury does not have so you have something to trade to him.
5) If Sury declares war on you I would just reload at that point.

That's about all the advice i can offer from what I see.

 

[megaclom]

As you can see from my post count, I don't post much on this forum, but maybe I can be of assistance.

This is why: I am now on my third game of Civ4, Prince level and am cleaning up. I played a game on the lowest level, then one on Prince and won by time and this third game is on Prince too and is in the bag, it's 1600 or so.

This is my advice: Civ is a game that takes some practice, I'm only on my third game of Civ4 but am doing well because I played all the earlier versions. You say you've been playing since it came out so I suggest some reflection. Just sit and think about the idea of tiles, think about each city and how to get the best from it. Think about each civic one at a time. Count how many tiles you are working, how many are free, how many between cities. How can you improve a city and it's tiles now; is there any tech that could improve a tile? Is there any way to change tiles or to have the worker change the improvement? Then reflect on your leader, what sort of advantages does he have, weaknesses? Then reflect some more. And then some more after that. I think you need to come to a very deep understanding of the what it is of Civ before you can master this game. I'm not joking. Civ is very much like gardening... Or, a civ is like an animal, but it moves in its environment in a very unusual way.

In 1832 Beijing should be way bigger than size 12. Why is it this size? Why is it building wealth? Why do you only know those three other civs? Why isn't the whole map explored? Why are there knights and long bows? I think the answer to all of these questions is some fundamental misunderstanding of Civ or not fulling getting the gist of how Civ works.

Think about it this way, if you were to make a Civ game yourself, what are the necessary qualities of the game? How could you describe this in the simplest terms. Civ is a game of chess really, but with very many pieces, which can change, and in some ways the board can change too. What is a city? What is a settler? What is a worker? What is a unit? Seriously, at a very deep level you need to think about these questions if you want to master Civ. Then start to think about more complicated questions like war weariness or borders or techs. Civ is an algorithm or a math equation; the x and the y are represented by colors. One of my very few complaints with Civ4, very few, I am very impressed, is there is too little randomness; Civ is a game of math and the equations nearly always work out in a predictable way, or in an actuarial way.

Regarding particulars, I think you are partly right about score not being important, but it does give an average of many different factors. One thing to look at is the demographics screen, what are you lowest in? How will you improve those facts. Also, I usually go after whoever is strongest. I always play domination on continents, or in Civ4 now, custom_continents, so that may be particular to myself. But I think you need to reflect on the resourses too, why is there unhealthiness and unhappiness in your cities. Also, contrary to the advice often given here, be very careful about any trade. If you don't need it, do not trade it to the other guy; go and get it for yourself. The one exception might be strategic resources; if the other Civ is not a threat to you, sell him the Iron, it's money in the bank, otherwise avoid any tech trade that is not fair, and not only not fair, but will it help a strong Civ?, and any happiness and health trade that you don't need now or will help a strong Civ. Make friends with the little guys and cut all trade with the strongest Civs, anything you trade with them will make them stronger. Think also about wars of destruction, not for any resourse or territory or access, but just to raze the enemy capital, also, so it seems, war can be very profitible in Civ4 if conducted carefully.

Next game you play, make sure there are no less that 100 hours on the time played log. Agonize over every settler --over every worker move even; and over every tech choice, unit build, stack inclusion, promotion, trade and so on and so on. But most of all, reflect on the deep mechanics of Civ.

 

[Sjaramei]

Next game you play, make sure there are no less that 100 hours on the time played log. Agonize over every settler --over every worker move even; and over every tech choice, unit build, stack inclusion, promotion, trade and so on and so on. But most of all, reflect on the deep mechanics of Civ.

Wow. 100 hours? Sounds like.... work?

Stop watching the score. Seriously. Score consists of three things. Land, Population and Wonders. Go for domination if you want a big score. Doesn't say anything about production, research or army size. Look at those graphs instead when comparing yourself to the AI.

From the little peek i got i noticed that most of your cities were very spaced out. Why? In the later stages of the game a resourceless city can be productive given the right improvements.

Rest is just making your empire efficient, which i think the poster above me meant,he just went a tad bit too far (100 hours... )

Check your cities, what buildings do they need? Make sure every city got a courthouse and a granary, and make them grow as fast as possible. Size 12 capital this late is a sign that you are doing something wrong, did you lack happy resources for further growth or just whipped away some population?

And show us what civics you used. If you are running lots of specialists use Representation, cottages Free Speech and Emancipation, you know the drill i hope

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

After looking through some games here, it seems to me that score is nice but it really doesn't matter, it's expected that one will have a mediocre position for some or even most of the game. (is this right?)

I'd modify that a bit - if you are playing at the right level for your skills, that is probably true.

However, there's a big difference between foundering and catching up.

QotM @ RealmsBeyond is "...all losses are caused by insufficient stubbornness." So one answer is to consider your position carefully, determine what is possible, create a plan, and carry it out.

The position isn't lost by any means, and you could likely learn a bit about the advantages that the human player has over the AI were you to play it through. Don't give the AI too much credit: you are playing against a box of rocks.


Personally, I don't find stubbornness to be all that much fun. I'm much more likely to end the game, postmortem to identify correctable errors, and apply those lessons to a new starting position.

In other words, instead of learning how to recover from this position, I'd recommend learning how not to get into it.

Eventually, you will graduate to a level where you are playing well, and find yourself in this sort of mess - but by then you'll have a better understanding for the game mechanics, and how to dig your way out of the hole.

 

[DaveMcW]

I'm peaceful-ish, and I prefer to rely on a small and advanced army to defend my lands, which obviously needs advanced tech, which I don't know how to get in 'higher' difficulty levels.

On higher difficulties, replace "small and advanced" with "large and up-to-date".

Furthermore, it is my opinion that you must build cottages.

 

[Orbit of Glass]

Thanks for the tips. Funnily enough, I've actually built all the buildings there were to build in my major cities, and banks in the others, which allowed me to bring my research up from 40 to a whopping 60 percent. I had nothing better to do so I switched the cities to wealth, I wasn't intending to keep it that way for long. Beijing is small because of health problems, all the floodplains. Not many happiness resources, true, the only ones I think sugar and wine. I could build more cities, and I have some unused land for that cut off to the south, but I still don't want to when I need all my major cities to build wealth to keep my treasury in the green. I think that's the main problem at the moment, as it stops me from going conquering.

I tried to build more cottages in the last game I played, and it didn't work out, my largest city was stuck at size 13, although that might be partly because I had poor terrain. Decided to go about half cottage half farm for this.

Score takes techs into account, so it does take research indirectly into account, right?

I was using representation, free speech, slavery and paganism, as I said before I didn't spread my state religion so I didn't see much point in an expensive religion civic. I normally use serfdom but I hear of the importance of whipping a lot, whilst no one really talks about serfdom, and whipping did get me the Hagia Sophia when it would have been finished a turn after Surya, so that convinced me.

 

[IDave]

Ok i am going to share a secret that i learned from these forums with you, this is how to beat noble........

Choose a civ that is financial..... then....... build lots and lots of cottages, preferably next to a river, then u actually can't lose. Seriously. You don't need wonders or a big army.

Just make sure that your capital is decent (i would regenerate til i get a decent starting spot, u want at least 1 food resource that u can tap quickly: wheat, corn, rice, seafood, pigs as long as they are not in a jungle.) Then try and get at least 8 or 9 cities and just build cottages everywhere, u will have a massive tech lead and easily win.

You could either shoot for space or wait til u get tanks and destroy everyone else. But from looking at your game there it kinda looks like a lost cause i'm sorry to say. You should be discovering liberalism long before then, i take it the AI has already beaten you to the free tech? And u need to explore the map. You should have sent out some Caravels to find the other oponents.

I urge you to try the cottage spam, it's easy to pull off and it will work, only thing that is tough is to pump out the settlers u need for 8 or 9 cities, chop or whip them as necessary.

Good luck!

 

[Sjaramei]

Score takes techs into account, so it does take research indirectly into account, right?

Yeah my bad, forgot about researched technologies

I was using representation, free speech, slavery and paganism, as I said before I didn't spread my state religion so I didn't see much point in an expensive religion civic. I normally use serfdom but I hear of the importance of whipping a lot, whilst no one really talks about serfdom, and whipping did get me the Hagia Sophia when it would have been finished a turn after Surya, so that convinced me.

There is one of your problems, get Democracy sooner so you can run Emancipation for faster cottages. (really helps a lot when most of your cottages is undeveloped) Maybe you need to work about your research path a bit? Civil Service, Code of Laws and to an extent Democracy should be high prioritized in your choice of research. Bureaucracy mid game makes a huge impact on your research so you should use it until you get lots of mature cottages, then the switch to Free Speech is justified.

And why Paganism and not Free Religion? (More Happiness and some more science)

Serfdom sucks and shouldn't be used at all, build more workers instead if you need to get improvements faster. (This is a great tip in general, most low level players don't build enough workers at the start) So staying in slavery in the beginning and switching to Emancipation mid game is the way to go. (Caste system could be used here to if you wanted to run a Specialist heavy economy)

And building wealth instead of army? If you got nothing to build (how did you manage that anyway? never happens to me! ) make army!

(Thats what you should do the rest of this game! Invade invade! Even your "friend" Sury )