Can Someone Give Out Their Secrets to Winning in Civ4 MP FFA Games

[mutax2003]

To All the Expert Civ 4 MP Gamers Out:

Would you mind posted your typical strategy in 5-7 person FFA, or are you afraid noobies will pick up on your tricks of the trade and start beating you? In a typical game, do you:

(1) Find an early religion

(2) Research mining->bronze working to reveal bronze, then chop for workers and settlers

(3) Research animal husbandry first and look for horse, then mining and bronze working

(4) Religious tech, turtle up, and go for CS slingshot or chop for pyramid

(5) Form alliance with another player, wipe other rival civs, then backstab your partner

Any helpful advice would be appreciated, I lost three games in the last three days (FFA games), and I don't like the sour taste of defeat.

[Fried-Psitalon]

You should drop by Civ4 Players. We've got a whole section on MP strategy - it's the Apolyton MP Affiliate.

[Canuck77]

Bleah - another forum that you need to register for in order to even read.

A pet peeve of mine, that is - strong sites like Apolyton allow you to browse the forums without signing up for an account. Even if the site pinky-promises not to use my email address for anything bad, it rankles that I need to give them my info just to see if there is any content worthwhile.

[Solver]

On a related notice, how about a different forum skin there? I fond white text on blue to be a very annoying combination, that's hard to read.

[Atomation]

Alot of times FFA can be determined very early on simply by how much of a "chunk" a player has delved out for themselves. Usually is a good idea to build your second/third cities as far into enemy territory as you see safe. It does screw up your research rate a little, but if your stronger cities are along your borders, then you don't have to worry as much about later built cities being easily overtaken as they will have a network of roads completely surrounding them and stronger cities can more easily provide reinforcements to them. The side benefit of building strong cities on the outside first is that you mask the fact that you have control of alot of land, since your score won't entirely reflect all the space between the cities you've claimed.

[Possibility]

I try to do the opposite of what Automation said. The further away your cities are, the more you pay in upkeep and the slower your research is. You also waste to many turns moving your settlers there, and it also takes far to long to connect your cities with roads, so your outlier cities dont have strategic resouces, and you waste your workers time building long roads.

If your cities are too spread out, someone will come in attack your outlier city and take them ease. I prefer to build 3 initial cities and to build them as close as possible, often over lapping. The only exception is to get a much needed strategic resouce.

If you have no enemies near you and still have room to expand safely without ignoring your military, then go ahead and do so.

Another important tip is to not bother much with archers, except as a first defender. Otherwise only make axemen, and some spear men (but only if you are being attacked by horse archers or elephants). Dont bother with swordmen. If you make horse archers, then bring along some axemen to kill the enemies spears.

In MP, you have to adapt to what your enemy is building. And you have to build a military. I usually play peaceful but with a strong military and I like to ask my nearest neighbor if he wants to ally. But if I find a weaker player who has no defenses I'll rape his ....

[mutax2003]

Here is what I usually do in my game:

First warrior explores in a circular direction, capital build another warrior. Research animal husbandry and look for horse, then settle my second city near it. Next I research bronze working, switch to slavery, and get the resource hooked. Each settler I send out is protected by an archer or an axeman. Then I build up some more defensive units. If an enemy is close by, I will chop rush units and take him over if he is weak (I check the power graph). Otherwise, I will build more infrastructure and cottage up the land (I aim to be #1 in GNP so my research can proceed at a good pace), and be the first to literature and build the Great Library. If I have stone, I will consider pyramid as well, but only the enemy is further away. I found CS slingshot impractical in MP since the Oracle will most likely be built before that, so I typical build Oracle if I have marble, and choose code of law as the free tech. In a FFA, I find it to be more effective to be a castle player, build up, get good research, then take over a player with my superior units (i.e. macemen, xmen, elephants, catapults), preferably someone who is already at war with a third party. After this initial war, I will consider ally with another player, and go after the score leader, so that he doesn't run away with the game.

[leclaire]

First warrior explores in a circular direction, capital build a worker. Research animal husbandry if you have the proper ressource in the capital area. I don't research for early religion because there is much more important thing to do, like wonder, military, city grow and colonization.

Exemple: in a MP. Indian discover all religion. I find the indian. I have Swordman, he have warrior. He is in big trouble. To easy victim, I can't resist.

Last, build cottage!

[MasterDave]

I managed to pull off a CS slingshot twice in my last two MP games. In the first game I had a decent sized private island and was in a clearly dominant position having built most of the wonders after the slingshot and being ver far ahead in score when the game crashed out (and nobody showed up to continue as usual when they are not winning).

The second game did not go quite so well. I pulled off the slingshot, and then began taking over my Chinese neighbor with about a half dozen axemen, when an eqyptian player suddenly showed up with a stack of 12-15 War Chariots!! Very bad news. About ten turns later I held the Chinese capital, but had lost both of my native cities. Had I not gone on the offensive I probably would have been able to withstand that rush and come out ahead with superior tech in the long run, but his stack arrived at my doorstep at precisely the worst time for me.

The bottom line is that you cannot use a fixed strat in MP and you have to learn to expect the unexpected. Playing so much single player has conditioned me to not see the Egyptians as an early threat, but in the hands of a crazed human player, those war chariots can be deadly in an early rush. Next time I am close to Egyptians, I am putting two spearmen in each of my cities immediately!

[Deity Dude]

Originally posted by MasterDave

The bottom line is that you cannot use a fixed strat in MP and you have to learn to expect the unexpected. Playing so much single player has conditioned me to not see the Egyptians as an early threat, but in the hands of a crazed human player, those war chariots can be deadly in the early in an early rush.

Playing SP can give you some real bad habits, if you intend on playing MP. I don't even play SP anymore.