So, I am giving Civ IV a try for the first time since 2006

[Barnabas]

When I bought civ 4 many years ago I only played it for a week, then I continued playing Civ3 (with the expansion packs) at monarch level (I am not a great player and monarch level is great fun for me because the AI is about as good as me at that level)

I got a copy of warlords yesterday, so I decided to install civ 4 again to see If perhaps I find out how to enjoy it.

- I don't know which places are good for founding cities
- I feel like I am cliking for turns to pass and that between 4000-2000 before jesus nothing happens
- I don't know how to discover religions and get great people
- I can't trade anything with other civs, do i need to discover something to do that?

It just looks so different from civ2 and civ3-

Can you recommend me some tutorial and tell me if you like the game, if it gets fun once you get it/underand it?

[Theben]

1) Skip Warlords and get BtS.
2) Good city sites have 1-2 food specials, as well as a few hills for hammer production. Try to get more special resources as the game progresses.
3) To alleviate that send out your starting scout/warrior to find stuff and uncover land. Build another one to help grab those goody huts before the AI does. Also you should build a worker ASAP to start fixing your land around your capital.
4) Certain techs get you religions if you're the 1st to research it. Click F6 and check out the tech tree. Great people come automatically if you build wonders or set specialists in your city screens. Being Philosophical, having the Parethenon or National Epic helps with Great People production, as do Golden Ages in BtS.
5) You or they need Alphabet to trade techs, Currency to trade money, or just a trade route to swap extra resources.
6) Yeah, it's a bit more fun. There are some good tutorials out and around.

[Dinner]

Just download Civ 4 Complete and play away. It's worth it with the expansion packs. Hell, even I've come back and started playing it again.

[Cort Haus]

- I feel like I am cliking for turns to pass and that between 4000-2000 before jesus nothing happens

This is the foundation phase of your civ where decisions can be very important. You're probably not building a worker quickly enough and researching worker techs appropriate to develop your land.

You should also be exploring with at least your original warrior / scout - looking for huts and neighbours.

CFC has a section with strategy articles, including the basics for beginners. If poly had been properly organised, it would too. Though there is probably still a lot of good stuff from the strat forum from early on buried deep in this forum.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/

And yeah, BTS is the best platform - not for its professed new features imo, but for maturity of general balance and gameplay tweaking.

[Brael]

- I don't know which places are good for founding cities
- I feel like I am cliking for turns to pass and that between 4000-2000 before jesus nothing happens
- I don't know how to discover religions and get great people
- I can't trade anything with other civs, do i need to discover something to do that?

It just looks so different from civ2 and civ3-

Can you recommend me some tutorial and tell me if you like the game, if it gets fun once you get it/underand it?

Good city sites are sites where you have resources. What you're primarily looking for in a city location is food resources. The more food you have the faster your city will grow and the more specialists you can run. Food resources are wheat, corn, rice, banana, cow, flood plains, fish, and so on. When the resource is improved having atleast +2 in the city is good, I prefer +4 in my early cities. Other than food you want the city to have other resources as well, such as bringing you access to luxury or strategic resources (you have to research to uncover strategic resources). You also don't want to found too far away from your capital originally as that brings increased maintenance costs. For a beginner you probably don't want to found the city more than 6 tiles away from your capital.

If you're just pressing enter waiting for turns to pass you're not making use of what you have. Everyone starts with a scout or warrior, use that to go explore which will help you determine where to place future cities and get you some goodie huts. Some people make workers as their first build as well in order to start improving the land.

Religions are founded by being the first person to certain technologies. Those techs are Meditation (Buddhism), Polytheism (Hinduism), Monotheism (Judiasm), Theology (Christianity), Philosophy (Taoism), Code of Laws (Confucianism), and Divine Right (Islam).

Great people are generated in your empire through great people points. Specialists generate 3 GPP per turn of their type. So an engineer will generate 3 engineer points per turn, an artist 3 artist points per turn, and so on. Wonders generate 2 GPP per turn of certain types (a couple wonders like the great wall are only 1 GPP) such as the Pyramids generating engineer points or the Parthenon generating priest points. When you generate enough GPP in a city a great person appears, the type of person it is, is a weighted roll based on the types of points used to generate it. For example, lets say a GP takes 300 points to generate and you've made it with 150 scientist, 90 priest, and 60 engineer points. That GP would have a 50% chance to be a scientist, 30% chance to be a priest, and 20% chance to be an engineer.

To trade with another civilization (or even your own cities) you need to have a trade route. To have a trade route you need open borders (research with writing) and one of four ways to connect to the city. The first way is with roads, there needs to be a road connecting that city to your capital. The second way is with rivers. Rivers function like roads for connecting cities together but can't be pillaged. They're mainly useful early on for connecting your own cities. To use river trade routes you must research sailing. The next way is a coastal trade route. This works like rivers but goes along coast tiles rather than a river. You again need sailing for this. The last type is an ocean trade route, these let you connect to other continents but you need astronomy.

Also, more diplomatic options with civs open up as you research more. For example, you can't trade maps until one of you has researched paper and you can't use gold for trade until one of you has researched currency.

[Barnabas]

Thanks a lot to everybody, I got btsword btw

I have a few more questions

How many cities is normal in a standard size map? around 6?

If I trade a resource, but I only have one source, will I lose that resource?

I tried playing the Europe Map of the "beyond the sword" ex pack, but none european civs appear and the civs have the starting positions all mixed up.

Sorry for bothering you people, but, yeah, I am finding it more and more entertaining. What a shame about no Hittites, I miss them


edit: I also have slavery which allows me to rush production by killing citizens, but I can't find the button for the "rushing"

[Ming]

Thanks a lot to everybody, I got btsword btw

I have a few more questions

How many cities is normal in a standard size map? around 6?

Depends on how good your economy is. 4 cities are very affordable. The 5th city and more get expensive. I usually build 4 - 6 cities, and then let the AI build the rest of my cities for me

If I trade a resource, but I only have one source, will I lose that resource?

Yes.

I tried playing the Europe Map of the "beyond the sword" ex pack, but none european civs appear and the civs have the starting positions all mixed up.

Never played, somebody else more familiar with it should answer this one

Sorry for bothering you people, but, yeah, I am finding it more and more entertaining. What a shame about no Hittites, I miss them

BTS is the BEST version of Civ EVER! They have worked out most of the kinks, and it's a great game for both SP and MP. I can only hope they do as good a job with Five.

edit: I also have slavery which allows me to rush production by killing citizens, but I can't find the button for the "rushing"[/QUOTE]

[wodan11]

Never played, somebody else more familiar with it should answer this one

Barnabas, did you go into the Single Player / Custom game startup screen?

[Barnabas]

Yes, I went there.

But I don't want a custom game, I wanted to play the europe scenarios.
So I went to bts options and played the scenarios, but the starting positions are messed up, and for example you can find the khmer in europe.

I went to custom scenario, so I can choose which ivs I want in the game, but the starting positions are all messed up, with both Portugal and Spain I began around rome