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How I Mine for Civilization
Duki
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
In this topic you will teach me how to play this massive game.
I suck. A lot. I can beat chieftain difficulty... if I turn off barbarians. But it's hard. When I don't turn them off, I get raped, because I have no soldiers early on because it takes to long and then what the fuck.
I've read a few things at Civ Fanatics, but most of that stuff is advanced and goes right over the top of my head. I need, you know, relatively basic things here. This is my first Civ game. A lot of it is to do with the expansion, which I also don't have.
I have no idea as to how I should proceed with research. I just kind of research... whatever. This is no good. A build order would better. I still out-tech the enemy at chieftain (this is an incredible achievement), but I get my ass kicked by barbarians in the process.
I have no idea how to expand my city quickly, so that it actually produces things. I either get lucky and it just happens, or it takes twelve thousand years. I still have no idea why or how. It is madness.
I like to play as the Chinese, with the Financial/Industrious guy. He seems to make me lots of money. Which is nice. How can I better specialise to play with him... better?
Oh, and when do I expand? How often do I expand? Whenever I try, my gold goes down the shitter, so I always wait too long and they take my resources, the rotten bastards.
Hell, how do I even get my civ to war early? I never seem to be able to build units quickly enough in the early stages, so I never have medieval wars. I have no idea how to prepare for this shit, and am often to scared to risk it.
Teeeeeeeeaach meeeeeeeee. I know there are some pretty great players here, from the Civ threads where you'd swap every 15 turns. Maybe they would be so generous as to help.
I suck. A lot. I can beat chieftain difficulty... if I turn off barbarians. But it's hard. When I don't turn them off, I get raped, because I have no soldiers early on because it takes to long and then what the fuck.
I've read a few things at Civ Fanatics, but most of that stuff is advanced and goes right over the top of my head. I need, you know, relatively basic things here. This is my first Civ game. A lot of it is to do with the expansion, which I also don't have.
I have no idea as to how I should proceed with research. I just kind of research... whatever. This is no good. A build order would better. I still out-tech the enemy at chieftain (this is an incredible achievement), but I get my ass kicked by barbarians in the process.
I have no idea how to expand my city quickly, so that it actually produces things. I either get lucky and it just happens, or it takes twelve thousand years. I still have no idea why or how. It is madness.
I like to play as the Chinese, with the Financial/Industrious guy. He seems to make me lots of money. Which is nice. How can I better specialise to play with him... better?
Oh, and when do I expand? How often do I expand? Whenever I try, my gold goes down the shitter, so I always wait too long and they take my resources, the rotten bastards.
Hell, how do I even get my civ to war early? I never seem to be able to build units quickly enough in the early stages, so I never have medieval wars. I have no idea how to prepare for this shit, and am often to scared to risk it.
Teeeeeeeeaach meeeeeeeee. I know there are some pretty great players here, from the Civ threads where you'd swap every 15 turns. Maybe they would be so generous as to help.
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What happened to the last one? I was enjoying reading that.
It got going for a few pages, and then sort of died a miserable death.
Sort of sad, actually. It held such promise.
I imagine that you're doing silly things like building scouts or building barracks early on. Your first unit should probably be another warrior, then a worker or settler depending on the resources and the like. Then probably another military unit (or worker if you went with settler first time around), then from there things diverge a lot depending on your situation. If you've got neighbors, you should be building up a huge military instead of workers and then just take their's while ravaging their infrastructure which gives you free workers as well as slows down them so they're easy to conquer.
As for techs, get a religion ASAP. That should almost always be your first objective. Once you have one though, don't pick up another. If your neighbor gets one and you're going to conquer them early, you can just ignore that. Archers (Hunting -> Archer) are also a requisite early pickup. Otherwise, it depends on your resources. Grab whatever you need to activate those resources, and if you're not on rivers/coast, pick up The Wheel so you can connect cities. Resource revealers (Bronze/Iron Working or Animal Husbandry) should be high priorities, and if you're going for the Oracle, make sure to at least grab Writing before it finishes to open up at least Monarchy or Alphabet, which are great early techs.
Also, if you're going to use a financial civ, coastal cities and cottages are your friend. Stick to Democracy over Representation if you get that far just because you should have relatively smaller cities but they'll be money and production madhouses. I suspect that's far FAR away though. Mostly coastal works well with Financial, so uh... *shrug*
Always seems to happen with the succession games.
Anyway, you just have to play more and get the feeling for the game. If you expand too fast you leave yourself open to attack. If you expand too slow, it can severely hamper your progress in the long run. When starting your 2nd town, don't just throw it down willy-nilly. I look for the base location to improve my future territory. Like at a choke point, or an area where I don't want the computer getting into.
You only need 1 soldier on your city to protect it. Not sure why barbarians are raping you on chieftan?
On Noble (or even the one below it, whatever it is), the Barbarians will wreck through all my cities. I usually have a Warrior and an Archer per city + Walls and they still destroy them. I can't even get my Civ to grow and produce new cities/infrastructure because the barbarians just mow through them.
Looking forward to the thread.
Well... that depends. The AI overexpands and gets choked by upkeep, which can give you a massive tech advantage if you keep your expansion in check. You then leverage that to take their cities and reap the rewards. Obviously, if you're organized you can expand a bit faster, but it's usually better to just make sure you expand evenly around your capital instead of shooting off in a direction for a resource or something.
And if you've got a few AI neighbors, you can just farm them for workers and won't ever need to build more than a couple yourself. Using slavery to control your unhappiness is also a fun time if you don't manage to get Monarchy early.
If you're having issues with barbarians, just build more archers. Walls are worthless. Also, don't defend in the city other than one or two token defenders. Move your archers to the borders on hilltops (or forested hilltops) where their bonus is massive instead of a silly little 20%. You can then use those archers as escorts as you expand.
I haven't played this in a while but it's a great game - I'm going to have another whirl right now!
I've always made a worker first. And second. And third.
And only now I realise that while you build workers you city doesn't grow. Ai ai ai.
Why is religion so important? I've always been sort of... anti-religion in this game. I usually just pick up the one the strongest civ next to me uses, until I (if I) get to free religion. I gather this is a not so good idea?
Remember when I said to put your defense at your borders? This is another reason why.
Yeah... uh... well done sir. Early on, workers aren't even useful as they build faster than you can research new things for them to build.
Uh, because the money you can get from building a shrine is absurd? And it improves your relations with your neighbors while filling your coffers if you bother to spread it.
But you shouldn't trade away things like bronze, iron, stone or marble, because those resources are really useful and you want as few people to have them besides you.
And you shouldn't trade away resources you only have 1/1 of since you'll stop getting the benefit for it then. Well, unless it's a food resource or the like and you -need- the extra happiness from a luxury resource.
Should I build a workboat (assuming I have fishing as a starting tech) and use that to quickly get my city to 3 and start on settlers, or should I stick to building warriors?
I've only witnessed them willing to trade cities that they captured from you, and they'll only accept cities you've captured from them in trade too.
I can usually win at Noble, usually. The trick is using a mixture of forces, and you want to have twice as much defense in your border cities as you do in the inner cities, but nothing undefended. And you typically do want to have a "fast" unit, something with a movement of 2, stationed in every border city. This allows you to respond to an incoming CPU attack with a counter attack (if you hit them while they're on the march to your cities, even if you lose, they'll likely be too weak to take anything successfully), or to go out and hit barbarians once they get close enough to threaten improvements like farmland or roads.
The higher the difficulty level, the more cautiously you're forced to expand, and the more of your time is required for building military power ahead of expansion.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
And you misspelled misspelled!
I am about to finish up a marathon game on some easy difficulty and will be reading this thread thoroughly before starting a game on a more challenging difficulty.
For any particular reason?
I believe this is grounds for Nerve Staplement, followed by disciplinary Singularity Planet Bustering against the offender.
Barbarians can only spawn in tiles that no one else can see (human civs OR AI civs). If you station scouts or the like on hilltops and out in the hinterlands, you can drastically reduce the places Barbarians can spawn.
Eh. The best defense is always a good offense. The AI tends to build huge masses of military units in peacetime which can overrun defenders, but a couple siege units deals with that without any issue at all. Never underestimate the impact a couple catapults can have against even stuff like musketmen.
The problem I see a lot of the time is that people try to wage war ineffectually and end up crippling themselves for marginal gain. Bring overwhelming odds to battles. If you can't take (and expect to keep) at least two cities within the first 5 or so turns of starting a war, you need more units. My general estimate is 2 per defender if you've got the advantage, 3 per if you're fighting in the 20-50 range, and 4 per otherwise.
A mix doesn't help. Your axemen will end up fighting their archers while your horsearchers end up stuck on the spearmen and your theoretic advantage for mixed units is blown. Stick to one type of unit for offense, diversify for defense, but really, if you play well, you should almost never be fighting a defensive war except well above Prince.
It's almost never worth it to torch a city unless you're not going to be able to hold it for whatever reason (military or cultural), but don't be afraid to call a 10 turn truce to redeploy your forces or let them heal. The AI doesn't rebuild its military particularly quickly, and especially early, will often go into panic mode and keep building delicious workers or settlers instead of units to guard them.
And don't try to fight wars in the Ren period. Longbowmen and Pikemen are unbeatable by contemporary units. The only way you stand a chance is swarms and swarms of catapults. Aim for cavalry early, 'cause they outpower pretty much everything for a long time and will absolutely roll over civilizations lagging behind in tech.
Urm...I totally disagree. I generally go for about 1 worker per city, maybe 2. You can only work so many tiles, after all, so having more developed is a bit of a waste, especially given that your city doesn't grow when you're making workers.
Similarly, too many settlers doesn't help...overexpansion is the killer in Civ4. Building too many settlers means:
1. The current city doesn't grow.
2. Those settlers make new cities, which will tank your economy.
3. That city could be making more useful things.
Generally, I start with either a worker (if I have useful techs to start with) or warrior. Then the other one. Then a settler. I only build up to a third city before Code of Laws, MAYBE a 4th if I find an awesome city spot.
I like to shoot straight for Bronze Working, both to find copper and also to use Slavery. Whip whip whip whip. Especially early in the game, happiness is a real problem...but if you have an unhappy citizen and Slavery, you can simply work them to death. That's what salt mines are for, after all.
Cottages are your friends. Money is God in Civ4.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
So I just listened to you in my latest game and rushed to cavalry (which should have taken less time if I didn't forget military tradition needed music
And also, one thing I've noticed is that the AI, at least on these easy difficulties, is very peaceful. All the different AI nations love each other to bits, and hate me when I start multiple wars with one of their friends. How do I stop this shit? It gets on my nerves. Bunch of bloody doves, I tell you.
And speaking of doves, are there any advantages to being really nice to your neighbours? I kept trying that (I don't know hwy, I was afraid of war or felt guilty over double crossing friends or something stupid) and then tried not dismantling the enemy early on, per se, but just looting all their shit all the time. I mean, if I'm going to beat on them later on, there's no need to be nice now, is there?
You're....you're kidding right? Have you seen where you are, perchance?
Tycho Brahe was a real person. Getting angry at the game because it chose to implement a real person, whose name was chosen as a pseudonym by someone else, is kinda stupid.
I got the impression that he was upset that he was born in a far away land. Having Tycho born in your lands is badass.
Exactly, it means he wasn't doing his job properly as Civilization manager.
Montezuma is a rotten bastard. He's the most aggressive leader I've ever encountered.
Ugh...I despise Montezuma with a passion. He's always pissed at me, no matter what I do.
I always rush for a religion, mainly for the cash, culture/hapiness, and if you're in long game it allows you to basically spy on tons of cities. This is especially true if I picked exp/indust civ, since I'm usually strapped for cash.
I always let my first city reach 2 pop before building either a settler or worker. Typically I build a worker next, since I want to get some key resources, and make sure I'm able to build a road to my 2nd city. After that worker I always will build a settler. So you either want scout/warrior then worker, then settler. The reason for me is that I'm always strapped for cash, being able to get the extra production early allows me to expand my 3rd and 4th cities faster, and let me have a city which can produce some serious military.
One other thing I do is that if I have a shitty ass start location, I restart the game. I sometimes will turn off tech trading as well, since I'm a militaristic bastard, and the computer trades like mad.
As mentioned above, barbs only appear in unexplored areas, so fortifying a couple of scouts on forested hills is an easy way to nip the invasions in the bud. Later, you can station archers on those hills, and they will annihilate any barbs.
Time for war is usually either early on, before your opponents get longbows, or once you get riflemen. Always build up and attack, but if your opponent is close to getting longbowmen, attack early to take 1-2 cities then go to peace. If your attack is failing, send your guys forward to just pillage the shit out of your opponent. It gives you free cash, and cripples the AI for a while as well, which makes it easier for you to continue your attacks later. Plus, the AI loves to take you down 2v1 on warlord and above... so make sure once your war starts you are capable of defending your cities. A pair of archers (or longbowmen) for outliers.
With barbs attacking your outlying cities, make sure you move your advanced archers out and inexperienced ones in so that you keep building experience. Last thing you want is like 1 4 upgraded unit and 4 inexperienced ones, then the computer attacks another city. Better to have a bunch of upgraded defense units.
If you're on the offense, keep 1-2 fast moving attack units in reserve (as noted above). For example, leave a cavelry in your main area, because if they happen to send ina pair of turds to your cities, you can take him down way before he gets to your key resources.
Always make demands on your opponents before you attack. The least they can do is give you 200 gold before you decide to attack him! Hell, what's the worst he's going to do, say no? You're going to send in your tanks regardless.
Plan your civ to your playstyle. I love wonders, and am obsessed with getting almost every wonder. I usually take german therefore. I also love late-game war, so having advanced tanks is awesome. You may love expanding with early game war, so maybe Romans are great for you.
Two things that can completely kill you later in the game is overexpansion through war, and war weariness. War weariness can destroy your production and cities, so make sure you have a series of short wars instead of a long drawn out war (which is what the computer likes, plus human bitterness makes us less likely to sue for peace). If you're barely in the + for cash, make sure you don't conquer 10 cities and all of a sudden destroy your economy. It's better to take his best cities, leave the crappy ones, restore order and build up your economy to the point that you can wipe him out later. Shitty computer opponent is never going to recover from losing half his cities, and you can roll him later after outteching him further.
If you're not a "warmonger" (like me), you may want to plan islands or individual continent games. It'll help you work on your civ management skills, plus it lets you attack when you want. Or, have less civs, since the civs trade with one another and can gang up on you frequently at higher settings.
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See, this is sort of pretty wrong. You do need a mix of defenders in your border cities. Having an archer and a pikeman is a lot better than having two pikemen when it comes time for war. You really only need one unit in your inner cities though.
For attacking, you still need a mix; you need both standard units like axemen, and bombardment units. And even further to it, it's really useful to have a small reserve of units with greater movement to complement a core army of single move high powered units. Being able to catch the inbound counter-attack before it hits your door step is good.
Being able to repel barbarians without disrupting your defending units and risking them, possibly forcing you to delay some other goal while you rebuild them, also good.
I think the most important thing though, is knowing from the start how you're going to win. It takes planning, and it takes careful research selections, and it takes an appropriate civ selection too. Your entire strategy will depend on how you intend to win, and unless you know how that is, you're going to find yourself mired with no really clear advantage on any specific front, struggling to figure out how to win.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH