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

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by Nevordan
I was playing on Noble difficulty, as I understood it to be the "Normal" difficulty, and didn't want to feel weak,

Don't worry about that. With CIV4 everyone has had to go through some major readjustment in their thinking, even the previous CIV afficionados, so most of them would have started on Noble to get the 'feel' for the game. Myself; I've never won a game yet on 'Noble'.. possibly because I haven't played for 6 months & only bought the game 3 months prior

all it really does is give a +2 culture/per turn in all your cities, the equivalent of having a library

You'll see that a Library has an /immense/ effect, other than expanding your mind it expands your culture. As your culture expands, so do your borders - preventing rivals from settling or even entering your estates. Think of Catherine as starting with Stonehenge (look it up in the Civilopaedia), without the religious bonus. Better, look up Culture & its effects

Maybe I should try a different civilization?

I'll get to that in a moment..

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.

Well, on a Terra map the idea is to conquer the Old World (Europe & Asia) & settle the New World (the americas). So build ships & explore across the oceans! Fortify yourself & if possible conquer your nearest neighbours, building yourself a bigger powerbase in the Old World. It's not the easiest map to win for a beginner

OK, you want a different challenge. Try all defaults on the lowest setting (I forget what it is). Standard map (well, you can choose the layout if you look at the 'customise' options), standard difficullty, standard everything, & /learn the game/. It's certainly the idea I'd choose if I was trying out something for the first time! I bet you don't read manuals either

OK you're a new player to the CIV style. Always remember you have time! You can take time to study defensive reports, cities' status, look around the map, plan, develop, etc etc. From the beginning you can also choose your civ's advantages; you /must/ play to them! Ghandi is a poor warleader but an excellent builder. Catherine is a superb expander/explorer but a poor happiness provider. Elizabeth is.. well, you get the idea. Each leader has its own problems when compared to others, & that is what you must overcome

I don't know if this has been helpful to you, but it may be helpful to others. 'We were all beginners once'

[Nevordan]

Originally posted by Tokyo Sexwale
Cultural victory is probably my favourite. Try to grab as many religions as possible. And you need at least 10 cities or so. You really only need to get a religion in 1 city to be able to spread it. It's quite easy to get 5 or 6 by the end of the game.

Ten cities... TEN CITIES!?!? (like Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith) NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooo!

On what kind of map? Most I've ever been able to get is 6... and that's on a Continents map, and only because I have 1 or 2 civs to compete against on any particular island (see, this is why I'm only able to win on a Continents map to begin with!).

How in the name of all that is scared can I get 10 cities?

[Nevordan]

Originally posted by snafuc4
Don't worry about that. With CIV4 everyone has had to go through some major readjustment in their thinking, even the previous CIV afficionados, so most of them would have started on Noble to get the 'feel' for the game. Myself; I've never won a game yet on 'Noble'.. possibly because I haven't played for 6 months & only bought the game 3 months prior

Surprisingly the only two games I have won were on Noble difficulty... probably because I was thinking about the game so much, I forgot to switch the difficulty down... but they were on Continents maps and they were both Space Race victories...

You'll see that a Library has an /immense/ effect, other than expanding your mind it expands your culture. As your culture expands, so do your borders - preventing rivals from settling or even entering your estates. Think of Catherine as starting with Stonehenge (look it up in the Civilopaedia), without the religious bonus. Better, look up Culture & its effects

Oh, I like libraries... I was just misled by the Creative trait. I thought the bonus went up by +2 with every city, but this kind of thinking was brought on by D&D probably. I see that the +2 to culture is called "free commerce"... hm... prostitution?

I'll get to that in a moment..


Well, on a Terra map the idea is to conquer the Old World (Europe & Asia) & settle the New World (the americas). So build ships & explore across the oceans! Fortify yourself & if possible conquer your nearest neighbours, building yourself a bigger powerbase in the Old World. It's not the easiest map to win for a beginner

So the idea of Terra maps is to find new land across the sea? How come this is not listed in the map's description, or in the manual? Argh! OK... now I need to know the purpose of each map, that is, if any others have specific purposes...

OK, you want a different challenge. Try all defaults on the lowest setting (I forget what it is). Standard map (well, you can choose the layout if you look at the 'customise' options), standard difficullty, standard everything, & /learn the game/. It's certainly the idea I'd choose if I was trying out something for the first time! I bet you don't read manuals either

Nope, read the whole manual and the entire Civilopedia! The game's very elusive...

OK you're a new player to the CIV style. Always remember you have time! You can take time to study defensive reports, cities' status, look around the map, plan, develop, etc etc. From the beginning you can also choose your civ's advantages; you /must/ play to them! Ghandi is a poor warleader but an excellent builder. Catherine is a superb expander/explorer but a poor happiness provider. Elizabeth is.. well, you get the idea. Each leader has its own problems when compared to others, & that is what you must overcome

Yes, the whole "Civilization" franchise is new to me. Actually I guess it's safe to say that strategy games in general... well, I have little experience with them. I suck at chess. I SUCK at chess... I know the rules, but I have never won a game of that either. Hm I can't even say I'm that good at checkers... only "strategy" games I've ever played video-game wise are Populus... Black & White... Sim City... if you could even call the last one a strategy game.

I don't know if this has been helpful to you, but it may be helpful to others. 'We were all beginners once'

Everything I read here is helpful to me, though I do feel miles behind everyone else. Seems most people have been playing these sorts of games since they were invented, and I'm greeeennnnn! Also... I don't have the Warlords expansion (yet). I figured if I couldn't beat regular Civ IV, why upgrade until I get good... if that's possible, even. But I do appreciate every bit of advice everyone's given me. I can't tell ya how many forums I've been in where I was either completely ignored, or yelled at for being a moron (one person suggested I play a Will Wright game and get the hell out of his game)... So this is by far the nicest forum for Civ IV I've seen!

[Brael]

Map size determines the size of your civ. I find myself getting 10 cities or so pre praetorians, samurai, etc on games I play. I always play large maps (would play huge but I end up lagging too much in the late game).

[Cort Haus]

Nev, you said you were putting academies everywhere. Unless a city is very strong in commerce / scientists, it may be better to settle the GS in your Oxford City, which in turn is usually best in your capital running the Bureaucracy civic.

If you are racing ahead in tech, there will be too many buildings available to find time for units, but if you don't find time for units, your rivals will.

A good way to use a tech lead to allow a small volume of units to go a long way is to have a strong cashflow to allow instant upgrades. If you have a shrine city then all gold multipliers including Wall St should be built there, and settle Gt Merchants and Prophets there.

[Quillan]

Originally posted by Nevordan


Ten cities... TEN CITIES!?!? (like Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith) NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooo!

The idea behind the cultural victory is to get 3 cities with legendary culture. Legendary culture is 50,000 on standard speed. It's 150,000 on marathon, and also is different on quick and epic speeds. For ideal situations, you want a cathedral level building in each of your three culture powerhouse cities. Since the number of cathedrals you can build is limited by the number of temples you have, you need enough cities to have enough temples to build those three cathedrals. On a standard map size, you can build one cathedral for every three temples. Thus, you'd need 9 temples in order to build the three cathedrals, and that means nine cities. On huge, it's one per four temples, so you'd need 12 cities. How do you get 12 cities? That's why you have an army. Let your neighbors build your cities for you, then go claim them.

[Thrak]

Culture victory = hippie victory

Throw a great prophet at Theology, get some ivory and beeline for construction.

lvl 2 Elephants + lvl 2 Axeman + lvl 2 Catapults = Stack of doooom before 1 AD

[Hellcat]

I'm hardly the best Civ player on Poly, but here's my thoughts on your savegame:

-I know you said you liked being an isolationalist but wow! IMO what you're doing (or haven't done) is just handicapping yourself.

-Why didn't you try to explore outside of your continent? And why be so stingy about trading your world map? Generally, after the AIs discover paper they tend to trade all of their maps around anyway, meaning that they'll find out where you are one way or another. Plus, trading your world map to the AIs can net you hundreds of gold.

-Why not trade with the AIs? Signing Open Borders treaties allow you to have foreign trade routes (which give more $$ than domestic ones) and allows the spread of religion. And it's not like the AI can march their army right up to your cities; if they declare war, their units will be removed from your territory. Also, by trading away excess happiness resources I was able to get rid of your -40 GPT deficit and started running in the green again. Thirdly, Frederick is willing to trade you Aluminum which is what you'll need for a Space Race victory (which, IMO, is your best bet for winning since you have a decent tech lead).

-Your units. I see what you're doing with your big stacks of city defenders + Hereditary Rule, but at this stage in the game you'd be better off running Representation and using resources for happiness. I suggest you disband the random spearmen and horse archers sitting outside your cities as all they're doing is costing you money. I'd definitely try to upgrade all those ancient age units in your cities ASAP (you may need to turn your science down a bit for a while, but you can afford to do so; great merchants are great for doing mass-upgrades) as they won't do diddly-squat if Saladin comes knocking on your door with a big stack of riflemen and cannons. You also might want to have some cannons lying around in case someone does try to send a stack against you.

-Your city placement and tile usage. You never ever ever ever ever want to build a city one tile away from the coast unless doing so would provide you with a resource that you can't get otherwise. You want to try to build your cities in a fashion that almost all land tiles (with the exception of tundra, desert, and ice) are within a city's radius. Also, I'd cut back on the farms and windmills...personally, I only really use them when a city needs extra food, otherwise it gets cottaged, mined or watermilled. On the other hand, I really like how you've specialized York (needs Wall Street) and Canterbury, but London could use some more specialists if you're trying to use it as a GP pump.

-Lastly, don't be afraid to go to war. India is the weakest civ and has no less than 3 holy cities! Meanwhile, you have a whole bunch of units all dressed up with nowhere to go...

Besides what I said above, you're actually not doing too shabby from someone who's learning the game on noble. Hope this helps.

PS- You might want to check out some of Sullla's games for inspiration.

[Will9]

Originally posted by Nevordan


Ten cities... TEN CITIES!?!? (like Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith) NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooo!

On what kind of map? Most I've ever been able to get is 6... and that's on a Continents map, and only because I have 1 or 2 civs to compete against on any particular island (see, this is why I'm only able to win on a Continents map to begin with!).

How in the name of all that is scared can I get 10 cities?

I won a culture victory on a large map (16 civ) only settling 5 cities and taking 2 with culture.

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by Quillan


The idea behind the cultural victory is to get 3 cities with legendary culture. Legendary culture is 50,000 on standard speed. It's 150,000 on marathon, and also is different on quick and epic speeds. For ideal situations, you want a cathedral level building in each of your three culture powerhouse cities. Since the number of cathedrals you can build is limited by the number of temples you have, you need enough cities to have enough temples to build those three cathedrals. On a standard map size, you can build one cathedral for every three temples. Thus, you'd need 9 temples in order to build the three cathedrals, and that means nine cities. On huge, it's one per four temples, so you'd need 12 cities. How do you get 12 cities? That's why you have an army. Let your neighbors build your cities for you, then go claim them.

Actually, I find that if you like to wonder whore in your capital (with Beauracracy), you really do not need to build cathedrals there. Therefore, you really only need six cities in order to build cathedrals in your two other legendary cities in order to win the culture victory. However, I think you need seven to make national wonders (with nice culture) such as the Forbidden Palace, Oxford, and the Globe Theater. Bottom line: you really need seven cities for a culture victory.

Culture victories in themselves are quite difficult, however, as you need to do things like create artist specialists, play with culture sliders, whore wonders, coordinate temple building, use great artists, etc. The other victories are much easier to achieve as someone new to Civ.

[Quillan]

The national wonders also depend on map size: you need 6 courthouses for the Forbidden Palace on standard, 7 on large and 8 on huge. It's the same for the other small wonders.