Announcement

**dregor** · August 24, 2006, 11:16

Some advice. If you can, lower the difficulty setting that you're playing on. Start off playing on a Standard size max -- the Large and Huge ones can be overwhelming. 5 or 6 cities is a good number for a burdgeoning nation, probably more than I get out before the land is gone depending on the map type. In fact it's probably 1 or 2 too many in terms of the upkeep costs.

Don't go for a cultural victory to begin with, it more requires a better understanding of customizing cities I've found. I'd suggest aiming for a space race victory. You can play the game out without having the niche yourself, just keep up in tech and when you get to the modern ages get Rocketry ASAP and build the Apollo Porgram, then get all the techs that involve spaceship components (look at the techs to see which ones give SS parts).

As for health and happiness, I'm guessing that you're starting to run into these problems at around 7 or 8 popullation. In the early ages, you'll want to try and limit the growth of your city beyond 6 because you just won't have the necessary buildings and techs to counter the health and unhappiness. Cull the population either by having your cities produce less food (I suggest using the city governor for this.. click the hammer and coin icons in the lower right area of the city screen, and the "avoid growth" button beneath the coin icon once your city is around size 6), or you can let them keep producing food and just whip them to death with slavery to keep the population in check. Sounds harsh I know, but it works

Barbarians can be annoying until you learn the trick to dealing with them. Any tile that can't be actively seen by a civ is a potential spawning point for barbs. Using units as sentries to extend the radius you can see is a great way to stop them from spawning, and the best way to defeat barbs is to not let them exist to begin with

If it's not feasible to cover all the area around my city I'll usually try and cover 2 or 3 sides of my territory and try to funnel the rest of the barbarians so they just approach from one angle. Set up some defenders at the edge of your territory then and you should be ok.

Hope that helps.

**binTravkin** · August 24, 2006, 11:18

At first I must say that cultural victory is hardest of all (at least IMO).
You should try either space race or conquest/domination

Civ is not a game that will play yourself, it requires attention and micromanagement skills.

You can find all the resources and most other info you need on the map, use the little buttons right above the minimap (the little map in the bottom right corner), to switch on off different views.
One of them is resource view, I think you should be able to find it out yourself.

Also, a useful thing is the built in Civilopedia, where you can find information about all items of the game - units, resources, buildings, wonders, civics, civilisations, terrain, improvements etc.
It's located on top right corner and looks like a little red book just asking to click on it.

Below that are the advisors, if you hover over the buttons a little tooltip will appear informing you just what kind of advisor that button leads to.
Be brave to click on them and read/try out what's in there.

If you find yourself overhelmed by the barbarians, it means you have too little troops - double click a city of yours and order some troops to be produced (the most basic soldier is called 'warrior' and carries a club), you can always build something else as well.

Finally, if you see game proposing something to you and there's an option 'what's the big picture?', always pick that option - it will show the overview of the certain subject and help you to understand better what are you supposed to answer.

Regarding guides and faqs - if you're feeling as totally green, keep asking questions here, just make them specific like 'how do I do that and that' or 'what is this and what am I supposed to do with it'.
As your knowledge about the game grows, eventually you'll be able to read the game guide provided by community (mostly Vel), which is probably the best guide out there with the only downside it's for those who know the game.

Good luck!

**Nevordan** · August 24, 2006, 11:25

I'll give it another try I guess. I was playing on Noble difficulty, as I understood it to be the "Normal" difficulty, and didn't want to feel weak, but it's already too obvious that I am mentally inferior to everyone else here.

Anywho... last two civilizations I tried as Catherine the Great and George Washington. As Catherine was the first "Creative" civilization I've ever played, I got to see just how great the trait is not. I thought the +2 bonus went up by +2 with every city, but all it really does is give a +2 culture/per turn in all your cities, the equivalent of having a library... big whoop-dee-doo. I assume the "Expansive" trait is no different with the health bonus?

George Washington wasn't too bad I guess, for a guy with a nappy wig and wooden teeth. Out of all the civilizations I have tried, he had the least problems with money.

Maybe I should try a different civilization? How about this... give me a civilization, a map (I have been playing on Continents because Terra usually crowds the AI opponents all around me), and a goal, and some hints on how to acquire that goal. I am the kind of person who learns best by watching, but since I can't really come to anyone's house here and watch them play I seem to be screwed... but I'll give it another go....

**Nevordan** · August 24, 2006, 11:36

My biggest problems are acquiring land and getting the population above 6-ish... by the time I get my 5th or 6th city (assuming I get that many), the AI has spread out and taken everything all around me. Each time I play the game I feel like I have a broken hourglass with only half the sand, and the AI has no trouble spreading out like a cancer while I stumble just trying to protect my 3 or 4 population cities from barbarians. People like Montezuma (I always visualize diarrhea when I see this bastard, I HATE HIM more than any other civ in the game and always laugh when he's destroyed by another!), Ceasar and Alexander bully me and make demands... some of them seem to freak out and decalare war on me for no apparent reason, though not often. How am I supposed to do everything? There's too many things to build, too much technology to research, too many things rushing at me... So I guess my 3rd problem is diplomacy. Those 3 things seem to be ruining the game for me, but diplomacy is beyond me. Am I supposed to kiss butt or something? Trading with one of them pisses off several others (ooo I traded with their enemy ooo), I avoid religion altogether just because every time I declare one several other AI civs come to kill me for being a "heathen"... feh...

**Quillan** · August 24, 2006, 11:41

Firstly, welcome to the Civ community. It's a game that is simple to learn and difficult to master. I've been playing since the first Civ game in the 1990s and it still drives me crazy sometimes.

Part of the reason why there are few to no strategy guides for Civ games is that they are so open-ended, there are next to no hard and fast rules. Almost everything is situationally dependant. If you ask "Is XXXX a good idea?" the answer will almost always be "It depends". For starters, if you have not played the tutorial game, do so. It's extremely basic, but should give you some understanding of what's going on. It sounds to me like you already have that, but just haven't put it together yet. For other ideas, at the top of this forum is a thread titled Vel's Strategy Thread, Vol III. There is a volume I and II as well, though both are buried down in the forum by now. I recommend digging those up and reading all three of them. Definitely scale back the world size and difficulty level while you are learning. Also remember, there are some significant differences between difficulty levels, so strategies must change as difficulty levels change.

The early stages of a Civ game is a land grab. You need to secure enough land to build a viable empire. How much is enough? Well, it depends. On a standard size map, I'd say at least 6 decent cities. Don't quit if you don't get 6, though. That simply means you have to use other methods besides settling to secure it. At a certain point, the barbarians will appear. You have to have military forces to deal with them. Barbarians cannot appear anywhere that is within line of sight of any units or civilization, so spread a few troops around on hills to clear the fog of war.

Once the land grab is done, the game changes to one of development. How will you progress through the ages? Will you concentrate on technology? Will you build a military and conquer your enemies? Will you devote yourself to culture? There are many ways to proceed, and the choice of what type of victory you achieve has to depend upon the situation in the particular game.

**Nevordan** · August 24, 2006, 12:09

Hm, yes I have played through the tutorial. I have a bit of OCD and find it difficult to bypass tutorials or guides, actually. I have also read the entire manual and the Civilopedia. All interesting stuff and sadly even after all that it took me a week to learn that Alt-C forms a stack (this tidbit popped up while loading a game... why didn't I see this in the manual?)...

After many many games I have learned some things... albeit painfully. If 6 cities on a standard map is a good thing, then at the very least I have gotten that good, because I usually always manage 6 cities... usually... definately not on a Terra map. The only two maps I have ever tried are Terra (my first maps) and Continents... Terra maps always seem to give me garbage--lots of desert, for instance--and tends to crowd the AI opponents all around me. Inside the first 25 turns I would have meet every single opponent. No, on a Terra map I certainly cannot acheive 6 cities, not to mention all the water on those maps. But I like Continents. Usually I get good, fertile land and only a few "neighbors" on my island, although they are usually the mean ones (Montezuma, may he rot in hell forever, the bastard)...

I usually do this... immediately build a worker, then chop-rush the second worker and use those two to chop-rush a settler. I have two cities pretty quickly this way... this doesn't always turn out well for me, though. For starters, my initial city has only 1 population for a good long while. Secondly, I have only the one warrior or scout, who I usually send out to look for village. It never ceases to amaze me how the AI seems to just "know" where these villages are, as this is usually how I end up meeting them in the first place, the race to the villages...

Anyway, these constant interruptions usually throw me off track. I'll be thinking of something, then some idiot AI will pop up demanding tribute or asking for Open Borders... and then I'll feel rushed and forget what I was doing. One of the more annoying things about this game is how things are constantly being thrown at you, and I just want to be left alone and do my thing... and just like real life, this never works out

But this is acceptable in a game like this... I usually start to trip over myself after I do what I think needs to be done, then I can't figure out what the best thing to do is anymore... I get my workers to connect the cities and always build like this: On grassland (2 food, right?) I build cottages, even along rivers although I have read watermills are better along the rivers... on hills I build mines... on floodplains I build farms, and I build the obvious things where they need to be (pastures on cows and horses, mines on iron, etc.)...

I have read about specializing cities, but for me this has NEVER worked out before. The guides seem to assume there's all this land just sitting out there with craploads of production and food... but it simply doesn't exist for me. For instance, if I need a city that specializes in production... well I have yet to find the ideal location for once. Usually I have no problem with commerce, with all the grasslands and rivers... but production? Always the biggest ***** for me... and I do suffer for is, as everything is built painfully slow...

Next problem for me, maybe, is the need to build additions to cities when I should probably be building something else. Barracks in every city? Seems reasonable to me, although some guides say that's bad. Library in every city? Why not? See what I mean? It's too much! And I have no solid plan...

Of all the guides I've read there was only one sure guide to victory and that was a cultural victory, won by spamming cottages and cathedrals, but I have never been able to pull that off... space race? How do I win this? The last game I lost, 3 different AI were trying for this victory and Cyrus won in 2014... how do I get the necessary technology and resources? *shrug*

**Nevordan** · August 24, 2006, 12:13

By the way, thanks for welcoming me! This place seems to have nice people... definately smart people if you can beat this game, and I am not smart

**Velociryx** · August 24, 2006, 12:32

Hello and good morning, Nev! Allow me to add my welcome to the chorus above.

If you learn best by watching, the perhaps the threads below will give you the "birds eye view" that you're looking for.

I have delved into the archives here to pull out some threads that have graphic examples and detailed explanations of the thought processes that went into the decisions themselves.

Additionally, once you've got a good handle on the basics, and taken the excellent advice already offered here, I would recommend taking a browse through the (topped) strategy thread above.

If you have a specific question, I'd be happy to give answering it a shot, as would many others here, and, once my health improves, I fully intend to get back to writing more detailed guides "Devel's Workshop" threads.

Apolyton Civilization Site

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=148226

Apolyton Civilization Site

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147572

Apolyton Civilization Site

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147474

Apolyton Civilization Site

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147044

Apolyton Civilization Site

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=146201

Apolyton Civilization Site

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=146031

-=Vel=-

**Nevordan** · August 24, 2006, 12:51

Nice to meet you Velociryx

And thanks for the links! Already from reading a bit of the 1st, I can see a tactic I never thought to use--clearing out the trees for a settler so they can move the full 2 tiles per turn all the way to the new city site (all the while having units guarding the path, too!)... lots of people seem to like Julias Ceasar. I've never used him before... what's the appeal?

**polarnomad** · August 24, 2006, 12:53

Originally posted by Nevordan

lots of people seem to like Julias Ceasar. I've never used him before... what's the appeal?

Praetorians!

**ZargonX** · August 24, 2006, 13:05

Nevordan,

You might also want to check out the Apolyton Univeristy forum (it's a subforum of this one). The AU is about studying certain aspects of the game, and sharing your learning experiences with others. You say you like to learn by seeing examples, the reports of other players may help you in that regard.

**Rav** · August 24, 2006, 13:24

Another thing you could do, is post a savegame or a few screenshots. We'll be able to tell you what your most glaring mistakes are.

And don't feel bad about lowering the difficulty level. In Civ 3, I beat the game on Emperor quite often. I loaded up Civ4 and thought, "Let's just do an easy game to relearn the ropes". I played Noble... and lost. (I was trying for a cultural victory, and Mansa Musa beat me by going into space about 5 to 10 turns before I would win.)

After that, I I did about 10 games on Noble before moving up. And 10 more games on Prince before moving up. And now I've done about 30 games on Monarch, I feel just about ready to go back to my ol Emperor level again... but I am very very nervous about it

My suggestion for your game: Any financial leader, going for Space race, continents, warlord.

Rav

**Swiss Pauli** · August 24, 2006, 13:45

Originally posted by Nevordan
...lots of people seem to like Julias Ceasar. I've never used him before... what's the appeal?

Yeah Praets rock all right...it's a lot easier to build a few good cities and then take all the good ones the AI puts down than to build them all yourself.

A lot of CIV is about getting a feel for the game: Monty will always come after you, as you might have noticed, so why not lay in wait for him, or, better still, attack him first?

Aside from the detailed stuff, I'd advocate two things: build cottages and slave-rush as often as you can.

Happy gaming!

**Mr Justice** · August 25, 2006, 07:06

ive not read up on the posts above so not commenting on anything other than this.

post a save game up in these forums.
there will always be some peeps who will d/l and open it and examine your game and tell you exactly what you can do or should be doing.

Announcement

I have never won a game of Civ IV...

I have never won a game of Civ IV...

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment