Grr I am terrible at this game

[GunnDawg]

So I have the Civ 4 game as well as the two expansions and I am just terrible!

I usually play a huge map on 'Noble' difficulty and try to keep peace with people without submitting my self by giving them "EVERYTHING" they ask for. But then as soon as 1 civ wants to declare war on me, they do it out of no where and bring like 20 stacks of guys to start steam rolling city after city.

I cant really afford to have 10 stacks of guys sitting on each city just in case out of no where the enemy decides I am not worth and start steam rolling my land.

What all can I do to stay alive a little longer in this game and not be just murdered quite early on?

[Pitboss Vikings]

play on lower levels..

Settle level is fun

[Beta]

Or, play on noble with an aggressive civ and steam roll them before they steam roll you.

Playing against the AI it will 'sense' weakness and take advantage of it.

The other possibility is to make some serious friends of other civs who can help you out when things get rough. This is often hard to do, especially if the aggressor civ is stronger than the so called friends.

[Pitboss Vikings]

civ is al labout big stascks of units...

No tactics or stratgey required. jsut send lots of units till you get the win.

[Pitboss Korea]

There is strategy Ras. You have to bombard cities, move units around (rotate wounded units and fresh units on borders for longer seiges), use terrain bonuses, pillage properly, blockades, flank attacks, collateral damage attacks. Most of the time its just bringing the right units into the battle, so you could use spies too if you think you need to.

There's plenty of strategy involved.

But you do need a good army that can cover any area, even if you need two of them, and don't expand faster than you can handle.

[Pitboss Vikings]

seethat why you better at this game than me .. i only play settler, dont have to worry bout al lthat stuff, just send 15 - 20 cavalry, then upgrade to helicoptrs, build tanks, then upgrade to modern armor.

send them continually agaisnt city after city..

[OzzyKP]

Not understanding Civ4 strategy is different from saying it doesn't exist.

[Pitboss Korea]

yeah but if you just build a bunch of cavalry and send them in over and over (which is good for flanking by the way) you will lose more cavalry than you need to, you've got to use the canons and grenadiers as well to give collateral damage and to butter up the Infantry (if they are at that point). There's different things, but if your army is built to take cities and taking lower casualties you should get a group based on the city's defenses.

But yeah, you lose less units basically and they get good XP which makes them even more fine tuned. That's what you should focus on, of course a huge army of cavalry is always useful.

[Pitboss Vikings]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Not understanding Civ4 strategy is different from saying it doesn't exist.

and ozzzy takes pleasure at another dig at my lack of study of civ games.

[Pitboss Vikings]

Originally posted by Pitboss Korea
yeah but if you just build a bunch of cavalry and send them in over and over (which is good for flanking by the way) you will lose more cavalry than you need to, you've got to use the canons and grenadiers as well to give collateral damage and to butter up the Infantry (if they are at that point). There's different things, but if your army is built to take cities and taking lower casualties you should get a group based on the city's defenses.

But yeah, you lose less units basically and they get good XP which makes them even more fine tuned. That's what you should focus on, of course a huge army of cavalry is always useful.

at settler level , the AI never has good units to defenc with so whilst i do build some cannons altter, i find they move too slow to keep up the attacks.

At higher than settler level i find by time i built enoguh Bombard units and attack units that the AI is already way past me and usualy invades me first.

In fact at Monarch level i tryed the other day the barbarians wiped me out before i had found any copper or iron or horses. My warriors couldnt keep them out of my citys. just got to archers before the last city fell.

[MMC]

Meh, I'm not too hot at this game myself.

I find that Noble is where the AI starts to get somewhat human-like in it's skill (although it's still very predictable).

If you want a challenge, but still want room to fumble around and make mistakes (always part of the learning process), then try the difficulty level 1 down from Noble (I forget the name, Warlord?). And you don't need to fight that much if you have a strong enough culture and science base.

If you're the only Civ with gunpowder, and all the other Civs are still trying to get to the Renaissance, then you can pick and choose your friends. Butter up a few closer Civs, and let them do all the fighting on your behalf. No-one will actually try to fight you until they have Gunpowder too (Noble and higher means the AI Civs are a little more willing to throw everything at you, below Noble, they're more cautious).

Also, if you work to bribe every Civ to make peace with their neighbour, even if both Civs are your enemies, then neither will have any reason to build a huge army that will turn on you later.

Surprisingly this all works, most of the time. Not so good tactics on the Noble or higher, though.

[Pitboss Korea]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not good either, but I still know the basic ideas behind warfare. I play on Noble mostly myself, unless I am feeling adventurous, and that usually results in me feeling conquered.