This game is hard

[Dis]

Ice age- islands. Very difficult map to play on. But theoretically the AI should also be hampered. But the Vikings had more room to expand. But even the mongols and Japanese were beating me in score.

I ended up losing a score victory by over 2000 points. And I have no idea what happened. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I have no idea why my cities have little production and it takes me over 50 years to build the apollo program when they seem to be able to do it in 20 or 30. And yet they can stay at least 3 or 4 techs ahead of me the entire game.

[SandMonkey]

A saved game could really allow others to help diagnose whats wrong.

[Dis]

I'd be too embarrased. I'll try another one and see how that turns out. I am just flabbergasted. I have never fallen this far behind in a noble game before. I'm always in the lead.

I think it's something about the ice age island map. My starting location pretty much sucked. I had deer and rice. And fish. But I noticed the top ai had 11 sources of fish!! WTF!. I ended up with 2. And I had 2 sources of clams throughout my empire. No crabs or whales. I was hurtin' on resources. My second city had elephants, gold, furs, and iron. My third city had wines, and marble. My fourth and fifth city had 1 source of clams each. And my last city had 2 furs (and later uranium).

It was also a small map. I usually play standard sized maps. I'm really thinking starting location is the most important key to victory. If the ai has a better one than you, you are going to be in a world of hurt.

[MikeH]

That's very true. And islands is difficult because you can't improve the situation with early tech trading and warfare.

[Saurus]

My experience is that lack of points to a big degree has simply to do with limited landmass.

In other words, even starting on a paradise-island won´t give much points if the island itself is isolated and small so that expanding to the same degree that other civs might be doing is not possible.

If points is an issue, then it may even be worth founding cities in the middle of ice whitout any resources for just the purpose of getting the extra score for claiming the land.

[MikeH]

Someone posted the points calculation on here. By far the biggest contributing factor is population, which might be why it appears landmass is a big factor. More cities tends to mean more land.

[Addled Platypus]

come on and post the save !!

how else do you expect to learn ?

I have has my share a bad games, noting to be ashamed of

just keep them to a minimum

[Dis]

not sure how to post a save (wouldn't it be too large?)

I'm thinking I just didn't have enough cities. I don't know how some of you guys can do so much with just 4 cities or so. I can't. There are just too many things to build.

In hindsight, I should have conquered the Carthagians earlier. But this just wasn't a good map for me. The long continents hurt my maintenance costs early.

[DrSpike]

Post and use the attach file option. Civ4 save files are an allowed filetype and it wont be too big.

[Dis]

This game is weird. The next game after the one I described above I got my highest space race victory score (I still have 2 domination scores that are higher). Same difficulty level.

This time I was the Carthagians. I just do better with financial civs. I just have to accept that is my play style. England, Korea, and Carthage are my favourites. I started next to 2 peaceful nations, that helped. And I built the great wall, stonehenge, and the pyramids. Missed out on the parthenon, temple of artemis, and oracle.

And my starting location didn't seem that great. For food I had crabs and pigs. That's it. I also had spices in my radius. And later on I had copper. I really can't explain why I did so much better this game. Instead of losing by 2000 points I led by 1500 points (and space race victory)