Noob thread

[Blaupanzer]

raging barbs, choose religions, no tech brokering. I vacillate between permitting vassals and not and between permitting diplomatic victory or not.

[duke o' york]

Thanks for your help everyone. My game won't get here until next week, but keep the advice coming.

[Sarco]

If I were you, I'd start with CivIV vanilla first. Get the hang of the game, and then go BtS. It's enough new and good stuff in vanilla and then you get the sweet feeling of having two new games

My tips (some already mentioned):
- Keep an army that is enough to repel an attack. Preferably more so you can exploit the situation after that.
- While it's prudent not to overexpand, don't be afraid to expand quite rapidly, lowering your research %, in the early game. This game focuses more on units than earlier civ versions and more cities mean more units when needed.
- Use religions to your advantage. Either go with the flow or create the flow. Standing outside with our own religion will only invite trouble.
- Only build wonders you really benefit from. If you have built 10 axemen and your neighbour built the pyramids, you will have the pyramids soon enough.
- Decide which victory you will aim for and play accordingly.
- Build cities primarily for production or for commerce and build their infrastructure accordingly.

[Seedle]

If I were you, I'd start with CivIV vanilla first. Get the hang of the game, and then go BtS. It's enough new and good stuff in vanilla and then you get the sweet feeling of having two new games

I have to respectfully disagree. While I agree that BtS is almost a new game compared to vanilla, there's no reason to deal with the confusion and bad habits that will form from switching versions. Plus, he wants to get into multiplayer, so he needs to get up to speed on the latest asap.

My tips (some already mentioned):
- Keep an army that is enough to repel an attack. Preferably more so you can exploit the situation after that.

Importance cannot be overstated. If you do not build military, the AI will roll you. Make sure you have siege weapons available to deal collateral damage. And at least 2 spear/pike men per city, in addition to your other defensive units. Also, you want to take out opposing armies in the field, if possible, not sit in your cities, so archers and longbows are of questionable value. (Crossbows are excellent, however.)

- While it's prudent not to overexpand, don't be afraid to expand quite rapidly, lowering your research %, in the early game. This game focuses more on units than earlier civ versions and more cities mean more units when needed.

True again. This is where utilizing the specialists Cybershy was talking about come into play. Build libraries, run scientists, you can still tech at a 10-30% science rate. Also on the commerce note, roads do not create raw commerce, you need a new improvement, the cottage, for that.

- Use religions to your advantage. Either go with the flow or create the flow. Standing outside with our own religion will only invite trouble.

Generally true, especially when first starting the game. But having exclusive access to the Apostolic Palace hammers can be good.

- Only build wonders you really benefit from. If you have built 10 axemen and your neighbour built the pyramids, you will have the pyramids soon enough.

While this is true, there are some reasons to build wonders for yourself. The Oracle and Taj Mahal only give their primary benefit to their builder, so building them can be worthwhile, particularly the Oracle. Also, wonders give "Great People points" which, overtime, generate great people (duh.) Concentrating these points in one city can be useful, especially if you make all the wonders in a city generate the same type of great person. This is especially true of wonders that generate Great Engineer points, which are otherwise difficult to come by, especially in the early and mid games. Finally, if you need a particular wonder for your game plan (Sistine Chapel for cultural victory, Mausoleum of Mausollos (sp?) for the Golden Age strategy, etc.) it can suck to build an army to capture it, only to have it built on a continent you can't access at that point in time. Also, while it is true that it is generally more efficient to capture rather than build wonders, you can wonder whore just fine at Noble difficulty and still stomp the AI (well, I can, anyway. I'm sure others can wonder whore at higher difficulties)

- Decide which victory you will aim for and play accordingly.
- Build cities primarily for production or for commerce and build their infrastructure accordingly.

What he said.

Also, the most important thing for success is Civ 4 is adequate workers. You should have at least 1, preferably 2 per city.

[Blaupanzer]

Easy on the workers early. Until they can do all the basic activities don't waste hammers on them, build troops. Also during the height of the barbarian onslaught every worker will need a combat unit to protect them. Those will be units not standing in the cities or in effective positions to guard exploited resources. So ease into that heavy load of workers.

[Sarco]

Yes I tend to use less workers now than I did before. Getting one or two out early is important though. If you rush an enemy early, chances are that you will capture one or two more.

About the army size and type:
- always build more siege units than you think you need. Sacrificing them to wear down enemy citydefenders after bombardment is the best way to take cities (and to counter large stacks).
- When you get your first (and maybe your second) great general, consider attaching him to a unit, promoting that unit to Medic III. This will help you a lot in wars. A bonus is if you already have a unit that has woodsman III, attach the GG to that unit in that case.

About wonderspamming:
Yes, I've played a lot of wonderspamming games (finished one yesterday) and I like to build them. Though I susually spam wonders when I'm ahead anyway. The reason I stress not building them is that when you come from earlier versions of civ, you want to build them all. So I say build very few, then learn to use the wonders. In eralier versions almost all wonders were justified builds. In Civ IV, all wonders can be good builds but only when coupled with the appropriate strategy. Therefore: try to build few wonders at first.

The GPP point is true about great engineers but generally specialists give more GPP.

And about the CivIV / BtS point: sorry, forgot the MP thing.

[BeBMan]

Re patches, what is the most recent one to get (I ordered the complete pack too)? Do I assume correctly - I need to have the latest "official" patch, then can additionally install the unofficial one?

[Sarco]

http://boa.apolyton.net/civ4/files/official/Civ4BtSPatch_v317.exe

That's the 3.17 patch for BtS.

The unofficial patch thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?t=178468

[BeBMan]

Ahh thx. I thought I had to get some "official" one before installing that, but if the 3.17 thing is enough it's even easier

[joncnunn]

The unofficial patch sits on top of BTS 3.17.

[Krill]

Easy on the workers early. Until they can do all the basic activities don't waste hammers on them, build troops. Also during the height of the barbarian onslaught every worker will need a combat unit to protect them. Those will be units not standing in the cities or in effective positions to guard exploited resources. So ease into that heavy load of workers.

That's incredibly bad advice

You need enough workers to keep up with population growth, and you should be researching techs that allow you to do the improvements that you need; for example if you have pigs, you should research Animal Husbandry so you can improve them with a pasture, if you have lots of forests you should be teching Bronze working to chop the majority if not all of the forests in you capital. And when you have finished your settler, you ought to have a road to the new city in place so the second city gets planted earlier, and have workers to keep on improving you capital, new city and chop forests as required.

[Willem]

I have to respectfully disagree. While I agree that BtS is almost a new game compared to vanilla, there's no reason to deal with the confusion and bad habits that will form from switching versions.

I agree. There's really no point in playing vanilla just to get an idea of some of the basics, you can do that well enough in BtS. Though there are a few more things to learn while playing BtS, there's not so many that you need to ease into it. My playing strategies changed quite a bit from the original game and it will probably just lead to frustration finding out that something which worked in vanilla doesn't anymore in BtS. You may as well just jump right in and get your feet wet right away.

And at least 2 spear/pike men per city, in addition to your other defensive units.

That's totally unnecessary. You only need Spear/Pikemen in your border cities and even then you can usually get away with just one per. The AI seldom attacks cities with it's horse units, it prefers melee. Unless of course you're up against a civ with a horse based UU, like the Mongolians.

... so archers and longbows are of questionable value.

Archers/Longbowman are the best defensive units in the early game, they even start with a bonus for city defence. Add some levels in the City Garrison promotion and they'll be difficult to take out without the help of siege units. So I'd hardly consider them questionable.

(Crossbows are excellent, however.)

Only against melee units, they're rather useless against anything else. Longbowmen are much better at overall city defence, though Crossbowman also come in handy sometimes on offence.

Also, the most important thing for success is Civ 4 is adequate workers. You should have at least 1, preferably 2 per city.

I go with 1.5 myself. 1 per to work the city itself then the others use the Build Trade Network automation.

[Krill]

Automating the workers is a dumb idea, as you are basically admitting the AI is doing an alright job, which it isn't.

And the number of workers per city idea is just a general approximation; you'll need more workers the fast you are expanding, although 2 per city is probably the best approximation you are going to get as it holds for the majority of cases.

[duke o' york]

I've always hated worker automation, simply because it always makes poor decisions and ends up wasting valuable time. Incidentally, can you pre-load workers in Civ IV? I know it's sneaky, but that saved me a few times in Civ II.

[Seedle]

That's totally unnecessary. You only need Spear/Pikemen in your border cities and even then you can usually get away with just one per. The AI seldom attacks cities with it's horse units, it prefers melee. Unless of course you're up against a civ with a horse based UU, like the Mongolians.

The borders city point is a good one, but my experience differs from yours on what the AI likes to attack with. It may prefer melee units in its stacks, but it tends to spam horse-based raids on me, regardless of which civ it is. When your combat 2 formation spearman loses to a horse archer, and the rest of your defenders just roll over to a couple more, it isn't fun. Always 2 anti-horse units.

Archers/Longbowman are the best defensive units in the early game, they even start with a bonus for city defence. Add some levels in the City Garrison promotion and they'll be difficult to take out without the help of siege units. So I'd hardly consider them questionable.

But my point was, you have to leave them in the city and let the enemy come to you. Your hammers are generally much better spent on offensive units that can take out the enemy stack in the field.

Only against melee units, they're rather useless against anything else. Longbowmen are much better at overall city defence,

True enough, but again, I don't generally (though certainly I can't say never) defend in my cities.

though Crossbowman also come in handy sometimes on offence.

This was my point.