Difficulty problems...

[Feyd]

Hello all,

I'm writing to you today to discuss my "problem". Basically it is this:

I've been playing Civ since the original and I've never been able to handle a game above Warlord.

If you want to laugh at me then feel free, but I really need to figure out what I'm doing that keeps me from stepping up to that next level.

I LOVE Civilization. It has been in a close race with the Final Fantasy series for a long time, but it has finally won out and I want to get better. In evaluating my own game, I have come up with four things that I have problems with in games above warlord (and due to the improved AI in III, I'm even experiencing these somewhat on that level):

1.) I can't keep up with the AI on production and am hard pressed to get a single wonder. I'm not horrible at this, but even on games that I think I'm doing good on settler/defender/wonder production I quickly find that I'm nowhere near doing as good as I think I am. Often, I'm having a great game in my mind and find out that I'm second or third in the overall scoring and map size. (I like to retire instead of quit oftentimes) Finally, because of all this, I am often railroaded into a very small area for the main body of my civilization as the AI often takes up (A) the best spots or (B) makes a border of cities blocking me from part of the continent. Basically, my problem is that once I get a good core of cities or I have built a few settlers and start having my outlying cities build settlers I tend to stop and improve a little before starting... That lost time is what hurts me I think, but if I don't improve (barracks for spearmen, granary for settler/worker, and temples for everything) then my game also hurts!

2.) I get frustrated easily when I lose wonders or generally am not dominating. I know this is something that I just need to work on myself, but do you guys and gals have any zen methods or whatever to keep you from quitting and deleting the save file when you finally wind up in the medieval period fourth out of eight?

3.) I'm a perfectionist. I get neurotic if my cities tiles overlap too much and the AI's tendency to put cities on even the most inviable of squares where there are holes in your civ infuriates me. 90% of the wars I start are due to this sole purpose. (With the other 10% being split between "because I want to make somebody my whipping boy" or "you shure have some pretty cities there with lots of resources"). Also, if I lose the Pyramids or other "watershed" wonders I quite often find myself losing faster b/c of my regular dependence on their effects in every game I play.

4.) Finally, I read from this board constantly looking for new info and help with strategy, but a lot of it seems to go over my head. When people are saying, "I do this, this, and this to start my game" and "I choose this civ because..." I read the words but they just don't stick. I can't play like that for some reason OR when I try it the same things don't happen.

I know these things are pretty big issues (although I hope I'm wrong about that) and ANY help you guys could give would be great. To finish let me just give you a few more bits and pieces about my approach and then i'll turn it over to you. I have read some of the most insightful writings I've ever read on this board, so I know some of you can help me...please...help me?

Civ's I normally play (attributes): 1-Industrious (I LOVE the souped up workers and my goal thru the whole game is to get more shields), 2-Religious (I can't do without my quick culture pops. Not only does it help me with expansion, but I love to take full advantage of the land.), 3-Militaristic (even with them I can't seem to get a leader before calvary that is why this is so low).

Basically, I start my game with the original Civ I approach (which is also part of my problem) Warrior, Warrior, Settler, Spearman, Settler, Temple, Spearman, Wonder with my main city and then settlers and spearmen with my others. when my cities go to 1 after a settler and I have a spearman I put a culture improvement in (which slows me down, but I can't rationalize not doing it). Anyway. I get a good core and then stop expanding as I discussed above. Problem is, in CIV III my core isn't doing as well as in the past *shrug*.

Anyway, I hope this wasn't too lengthy and that I get some ppl to help me out. Thank you in advance.

[caliskier]

I was there

I need to make this short because my girlfriend will get pissed at me, she will play civ but she doesn't like my addiction to it.

Here is what I do. First I found out that the other civs make cities like crazy even on warlord. Second, I don't worry about making a bunch of spearman. I get 2 warriors first so my first city will grow to 3, settler next. I use the warriors to find goody huts and new city locations, yes I don’t
protect my city, the game is young and none will attack you for a while so why protect
your city. Should have said so earlier I use French (actually made up my own French like
empire called Hebrew) Industrial is great, commercial is good to help corruption. Goody
huts will eventually start giving you advances. After I have 4-5 cities and my first city
has a granary I build Pyramids, and I mine...sorry, you should have some hills or some
other shield producing land around this town for production. And once you have these 5
cites you should protect them because barbarians will attack. I try to keep 2 cites on
settlers all the time will I land grab. I also only have 7 civs on a large map. I will start
over if my land sucks after about 30 min of play. The other day I took 2 hours to start a
good game. I think it takes practice, I could only play prince on the other civ games but I
found that if you build a lot of cities this game should go better. The AI will build and
build like I said, and I have heard that it likes the pyramids. One other thing if you build
close to forests and you chop them down it translates to 10 shields in your city for
production, so if you get stressed about the pyramids you can use that.
Summary
I pretty much focus on warriors and settlers for the first 3 cities, Put a temple in my first
city where I plan to put the pyramids when I get 4 cities, build more settlers, go with
pyramids at 5, maybe a granary in one of my other fast producing cities, then at 6-7 I start
building more temples, and make sure you build up production around the pyramid city
with that worker, maybe you should have a second worker if you have 5+ cities. After I
have 6-7 cities they are outlying cities so I give them spearman. The inner cities that have
warriors won’t get attacked, you can update them later. Bring the science up to 60-80% if
you can handle it, commercial seams to give you more money to do this. Trade a little
with other civs otherwise they’ll just get it from someone else and you loose. From what
I can tell, the other civs are stupid at city planing like temples libraries and such so I think
it will get easy to beat them in a war for you. When you can start building librarys and some other wonders.
I hope this helps, and is not too confusing. I always wished someone would help me.
Girlfriend is going out tomorrow with friends...I get to play!!

[Tuberski]

I have the same problem, if the game doesn't go the way I want it to, I get frustrated. But, I've come to learn that, when it doesn't go your way it can be fun too. So I'm actually getting to the harder difficulty settings.

[caliskier]

Hey I noticed you were a teacher, I am a 27 year old math teacher, I thougt I was the oldest nerd on this site!

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by caliskier
Hey I noticed you were a teacher, I am a 27 year old math teacher, I thougt I was the oldest nerd on this site!

Not a chance, I'm 33 and Ming the Moderator is in his late 40's or early 50's, I believe.

[Feyd]

Interesting game

Well, after I posted I tried a game with the Iriquois. I can really see now why people like exploration. BUT, I'd only suggest it on a map with lots of 1 move tiles. I set my game to arid/cold/5 billion. There are a lot of rivers that slow down my road movement, but it is 50 BC and I've got the sweetest UU in the game, the Mounted Warrior. I was able to spot out five luxury resources before anyone else and I hauled ass to get a city built at each. After that, I wound up getting Mounted Warriors (which I had been anticipating) and so then I built a few and sent them over to them damn dirty Aztecs to raise a little hell. At the first attack I hit a golden age.

I was flying high. Granted it was only Warlord, but I was pretty satisfied with my "quickstart" (Which is one of the things I have to work on). After a quick settlement of the situation with the Aztecs (heavilly in my favor) I set about to relocate my main force to the east where the Germans had the unfortunate fate of being placed. Now I'm warring with them. I lost my golden age a few hundred years ago (but it served as a good boost) and now I'm noticing the problems rising up again.

1.) I'm being out "tech"-ed...The computer players are all kissing each others rear and giving out techs like they were candy. Of course, I found this out in other games I've played and I'm not quite sure how to counter it. What do you do when every other civ is stomping your tail in the tech race? (Granted this was only the BC years) I've spent the majority of my money and commerce on science (money by buying from other civs) and I've had to take the shaft in trades once or twice (but it was my own fault for not just attacking first).

2.) No matter what I do, I can't get a hero. I'm winning the war. That much is obvious...I've lost three mounted warriors...1 to a fortified German spearman, and two to barbarians who just happened to pop up right as I finished with a big siege and was weak. The two barb ones were half of my current elites and so that just halved my leader chances. Needless to say I was ticked... in fact, I quit like 10 minutes ago to take a breather. I'm so upset in the inability to get leaders in this game...*sigh*

3.) Despite the fact that I've done the best job in settling and I've gotten a few other cities from the germans that were pretty nice (6th luxury resource) I still am having a problem with my setup. All that time spent expanding kept me out of the wonder race JUST long enough to mess with my participation. I am hoping that the Golden Age gave me enough of a boost to catch up, but I know I'm going to lose either 1) The Great Library or 2) The Pyramids. I have both building right now, but from the looks of it, the library/pyramids/oracle are all going to be done nice and soon and I'll be left with two wonder level cities that are going to lose major production points... So still, I haven't corrected SOME of these issues.

Thanks for the responses so far and I look forward to more.

P.S.-Yeah..I'm actually a pre-service teacher...debating whether or not to stick with it...I'll see how my student teaching goes.

Talk to ya later...

[Nym]

Well, the beginning is quite important but, you should not despair if it does not work as you want.
In my current game (regent level), I was behind in tech race during all the ancient era and was unable to get any wonder. I also lost the first wonders of the middle age era, but since I discovered Astronomy, I am quite far ahead in tech race and monopolize almost all wonders. So I think it is important to keep on playing and to trade tech (IMO it is the key for builders).

PS : I did not even trigger my golden age.