Wveth's First Ever Posted Game - Help Me Not Suck!

Wveth

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 8, 2010
Messages
37
Location
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
Hello! Some of you may remember me as the guy who didn't know jack about posting games. If so, nice to see you again. So I'm going to post this game as I go. I'll do just a screen shot of my starting area, and then I'll post a save ten turns down the line, and so on.

Please help me to be smart and good at Civ IV. I am at your mercy.

Civ: American Empire
Leader: Roosevelt [Ind/Org]
Difficulty: Noble
Rivals:10

Map: Terra
Map Size: Huge
Climate: Temperate
Sea Level: Low
Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
World Wrap: Cylindrical
Resources: Standard

Extra Options:
Lock Modified Assets (so I don't give into temptation and cheat)


SO ABOUT MY START:

I got pretty lucky here, starting off with two food resources both covered by America's starting techs. I'm training a Worker right now who will hook up that corn as soon as possible. After that, a Work Boat for the crab and then a Warrior and then a Settler.

As for techs, I want to beeline to Bronze Working so I can find Copper, which will help me figure out where my next cities are going.

Meanwhile my warrior will head on up to that tribal village and then explore around.

Anything wrong so far?
 

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  • CIV IV NOBLE ROOSEVELT START.jpg
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Turn 10 - nothing has changed, really. The villagers gave me a map and my warrior is exploring around. I don't see any resources I need to get to yet - just wheat to the west and cows to the east. Some clams to the north, nothing earth-shattering. Still exploring. Am only posting the save for completeness' sake
 

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  • NOBLE ROOSEVELT 1.CivBeyondSwordSave
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Turn 20 - Everything is on track. Second tribal village gave 47 gold. So that kinda blows, but it's better than nothing. My Worker is building a farm and I'm building a Work Boat.

My Warrior killed a bear :)

EDIT: I'm wondering what to have as my first non-resource improvement. I'm thinking a farm in the bottom-right area, the only place that's irrigated. That way I get a small boost to production and commerce, and my food is pretty well handled by the corn and crab. After that, mines in the hills and cottages elsewhere, maybe.
 

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  • NOBLE ROOSEVELT 2.CivBeyondSwordSave
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Woah, stop. While it's very slow,if you want to do a game like this, you should restart and let people comment before you even settle your city. Then settle and listen to advice on tech, then play 10 turns and get more advice, etc etc..

Things I notice: Huge/Normal is a strange (and highly difficult) choice. Noble clearly makes that a lot easier, but generally, larger maps, slower play times, as just moving around takes many turns on huge. On higher difficulties, that's going to just be unfeasible for all but the very best.

As for techs: You have fishing and agriculture, so bronze working seems fine.

Work boat vs corn. I am not 100% sure what is the best on that, but I believe the best is:
Worker -> corn, then mine when done to get boat out faster. Then pre-chop and pre-mine with the worker.
then
Boat -> Crab, obviously
Grow with something, probably warriors. Scout.

This city will lack in commerce (river is super short, no place for cottages on it. Few places to put even non-river commerce, no commerce special tiles), but can be a good settler-pump. You need another commerce city. Any rivers nearby?


Also, post pictures instead of saves. It is way more convenient for giving advice. Post the saves too, in case someone want to play the game.
 
Sorry, I was a bit excited. It's my first time. I understand how this works now. ^_^;;

Questions:

1) Why is Huge/Normal strange and difficult? I'm not quite grasping that.

2) For "Worker -> Corn, then mine when done to get boat out faster," do you mean, build a mine after the farm so that the extra Production helps the Boat come out faster, right?

3) What do "pre-chop" and "pre-mine" mean?

4) Rivers are good for commerce because of the extra coin on irrigated tiles, right?
 
(post pictures and the save)

Huge is not amenable to the learning experience. Bigger is not better. Normal settings is a very satisfactory game. As for difficulty - it is relative - but if you are inexperienced the AIs will expand much faster than you and likely snowball into a losing position for you. Plus, normal settings allow you to play more games. More games = more experience. I recommend play normal settings for now while learning, and then play whatever way you want when you are comfortable.

You can probably just beeline BW now and chop a workboat out later - after or during the process of building your first settler. Generally always go for the stronger food resources unless there will be an imbalance in timings for workers/techs.

The coin is commerce

Pre-chop is chop a forest until 1 turn to complete to save the chop hammers for something important. Pre-mining is putting mining on same said forest so that the mine can be complete after the chop that you are saving. Depends on timings and worker management and stuff.
 
What Lymo said, + the hardest part of learning Civ4 = ignoring all distractions that you should learn about later step by step.
Why hard? Cos new players rarely do that, they think playing a full game teaches them stuff ;)

First step should be getting BUG or better BAT (many here say they cannot read those saves, but if they would install BAT (no need to actually use) they could.
You should spend that time for getting a good interface that helps you learning, standard UI is not that.

After that, settings.
Huts + Random Events off (among other thingies, they are just distraction).
Standard Map (Huge is really really bad for learning)
Always Peace (why bother with the war aspect of this game before learning building, new players tend to build too many units anyways and let them sit around)

When you sorted that (or at least some parts, i do not expect you to do everything just cos i said so but it would help ~~) you can post a start, do nothing, and let peoples here give you feedback from Turn 0 on).
 
If you want to see an example of a game walk-through you can look here. That should clear up a lot about the process of posting games as well as teach a thing or two about actually playing.

Great to see such a positive and supportive response, it is a good community this. Speaking of, some say community college is for losers, I say good luck!
 
Agree with no huts/events, standard size, normal speed. Not sure about always peace. Bug/Bat will certainly help you play but may limit advice from players without them installed.

Also agree with post start then do something else for the next 24 hours while awaiting comments, advice (and posters squabbling among themselves :lol:).
 
hmmm...Always Peace is interesting option for a couple of games at least. Never thought of advising that before. Allows focus just on the basic empire management stuff for now, which is most important.

Well, BUG installed right won't be a problem for anyone. However, I think everyone should have the BAT mod installed - there's really no reason not to. It's the best mod out there.
 
Always peace helps learning players seeing AIs as trading partner, and checking these screens more often and also looking for their own gains without thinking in wrong ways that they should not give this and that to AIs.

Much harder to learn than sending some units, war really distracts until you know how to build your own stuff and they are much more likely to realize mistakes without having axe rushes and all that stuff in mind..

BUG: http://civ4bug.sourceforge.net/BUGMod.html
BAT: http://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4bat/files/The BAT Mod (BTS v.319)/BAT Mod 4.1/
 
I'M SORRY FOR THE HUGE MAP OKAY. I DIDN'T KNOW. I DIDN'T KNOWWWWW ;_;

Anyway, I installed BAT and BUG aaaaaand it looks like I have to start a new game to actually use them. Maybe I'll do that and post a proper game without posting three saves at the very beginning >_>;
 
BAT is standalone and requires a new save. BUG should be installed in SP mode, which puts it in your Custom Assets. Saves can be run with or without BUG and it allows you to open forum games, unless they used another mod. (You can still install BUG both ways - it doesn't matter. The SP way just runs it without loading it.)

You can use WB files with BAT though, like those provide in Noble's Club and the like. I recommend using BAT always unless you can't.

I recommend installing BUFFY at some point as you might want to eventually play GOTMs and HOF games. (see sig)
 
When I loaded my game after installing BUG, none of the features were present and I couldn't open the options. When I started a new game, the features were there and I COULD open the options.

And... I hate having to ask all these questions. lol

What are WB files? What is BUFFY? What are GOTMs and HOF games? xP I'll look up BUFFY.
 
When I loaded my game after installing BUG, none of the features were present and I couldn't open the options. When I started a new game, the features were there and I COULD open the options.

And... I hate having to ask all these questions. lol

What are WB files? What is BUFFY? What are GOTMs and HOF games? xP I'll look up BUFFY.

I would rather go with the bug mod + bull.dll than with the buffy mod, since you are not playing Hall of Fame(which means HOF btw) i guess. For me both didn't work out and i think this is a common problem. So i would go with bug + the nice features of the bull.dll
 
Okay. Thanks everyone.

I'm gonna start a new one, properly, so this thread can be archived or deleted or whatever happens to threads when they are no longer viable.

See you soon!
 
Again, BUFFY is just something to think about installing later if you want to play "Games of the Month" (GOTM) or "Hall of Fame" Games (HOF). (see sig for links to those) BUFFY is the BTS HOF mod and includes BUG and BULL. BUFFY is standalone like BAT mod. "Standalone" means that it is installed in the mod folder and must be loaded to play.

WB files or saves are WorldBuilder files that you can make from a game and run as a scenario. It allows folks to play that game with different mods.

BUG installed in custom assets (and BULL) too is not standalone, although they can be installed as such. Not sure what you did, but you may have installed BUG as standalone and actually loaded the second time you tried it. Again, I would have it installed SP mode so that it goes into your Custom Assets. You don't have to load it. BAT will run even with BUG there.

I recommend using BAT.
 
For learning, I'd say that small maps might even be better than standard maps. Just add more AI opponents to keep the trading environment diverse enough to maintain good technology trading experiences.

Selecting Always Peace is a great idea for forcing new players to ignore war until they have learned the non-war basic Civ4 skills. Kudos to you, Fippy!

孫子武
 
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