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help me not suck at civ 4
Disrupter
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
so me and my friends have been trying to play civ 4 multi. But, we suck. We are on the default difficulty and the computer constantly rolls us. If we do well in the tech race, the AI gets all wonders and expands like crazy. If we do well with wonders they roll us with techs. If we do well with both, they just march in with an army.
there seems to be no way to grow, get techs and have an army in the early game without falling behind in most of these aspects. So how does the AI dominate? How can I not suck? I was awesome at civ 2, i could beat the AI on the most difficult settings. But we just get destroyed in 4. It seems like complete luck if one of us does well, but eventually one of us gets pwned so we have to restart.
so help me and my friend enjoy civ and not have to restart every 2 hours.
there seems to be no way to grow, get techs and have an army in the early game without falling behind in most of these aspects. So how does the AI dominate? How can I not suck? I was awesome at civ 2, i could beat the AI on the most difficult settings. But we just get destroyed in 4. It seems like complete luck if one of us does well, but eventually one of us gets pwned so we have to restart.
so help me and my friend enjoy civ and not have to restart every 2 hours.
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- make sure you utilise your tiles properly. if you were any good at civ 2, you probably know not to overlap your city's 'fat cross' - while this is still worth considering, it's less so now, and you're more likely going to need to focus on what resources you have and how to prioritise their development.
don't go overboard on food (and growth). if you have a couple of food resources (cow, clams), that should last for a long while without farms - note that if your population outgrows your happiness, you'll suffer for it and gain no real benefits. focus instead at first on happiness and production resources - iron, copper, fur and ivory - along with temples and other buildings that award happiness. chances are your food will start outpacing your happiness at some stage in any game, so check your city info screens to make sure you're not going to grow too much, and if you are, stop your guys working food tiles and change them to...
- specialists. these can really win a game for you, but they are much overlooked. a specialist like a priest will add a lot of production, research, gold and/or culture to your cities every turn - add this to the multipliers you get later in the game (ironworks and the forge for production, academies for science etc) and they become really worthwhile. much more so than an undeveloped plains square or a no-resource farm. super specialists are even better, so if you aren't in desperate need of that holy city wonder or insta-tech, use your great people for that instead.
- don't build too many cities too soon, it will ruin you. usually three or four is enough until you start getting money-savers like courthouses. i follow the general rule that if you're below 60% research at any given point (unless it's deliberate), your maintenance is way too much. so when you hit around 70% keep an eye on how quickly your coffers are being eaten up and make sure not to over-invest in new cities
- be ready for war, but be smart about it. don't have huge armies idle because they'll eat up money, too. have your cities well defended and have two or three properly upgraded defensive troops in your cities. and if you want to go on the offense, remember that any city you capture, you'll have to pay for.
there's lots more. i usually play for a culture victory and there's more i could tell you if you wanted to play that route, but it's quite hard. at the default difficulty you should be right just building your civ until you can take the offensive a few times in the game and win on points or a space race. there comes a time in any well managed civ where you've got nothing to do but build armies and throw them at the enemy, so that should usually be enough to get you a victory
i've probably forgotten some basics but yeah, that's what i've got.
it's a great game
Though to be honest, I don't understand how you can do well in one facet but not in the others. It's not like your economy is a completely separate line item from your industry which is completely unaffected by your research. I'm interested in how you are managing this.
Or rather, just tell us what you're doing and we can point out exact things.
Have a purpose when building and researching things. Do not build a bank because it was just another building you do not have yet. Does that city need the bank or are you better off building units ?Do not overextend if you can not afford to, but if you can and have the opportunity do it. What techs do you want ? Do you really need another religion or it can wait ? Look around in the early game, and research accordingly: if you have fish next to your city researching fishing is a must if you do not have it already.
Specialize your cities: look carefully at the resources around it and plan accordingly. Does the city produce a lot of gold: you can make it an economic stronghold. with marketplaces, banks etc. Lots of production: you can build wonders and churn out military units.
Unless you go for a cultural victory (which can be tricky until you get better at the game), do not be afraid to attack opponents if you can get an advantage out of it. Lot's of people make the mistake to turtle and not build enough units and get steamrolled by the A.I. Even in the early game especially if you have an early unique unit, capturing the enemy's first worker and marching it back to your city is a great strategy: you saved yourself time and resources in building the worker and crippled the opponent at the same time. Chances are you can take over their capital pretty fast, and that can give you a huge edge.
Early build order matter a lot: if you have close neighbors the early unit + capture worker is a fine strategy, especially if you started with a warrior. Otherwise build fishing boats if you can or workers first, if you have resources that you can connect, while starting off research for those techs (and by this I mean early resources like pigs, fish, etc do not go for monarchy immediately ). While you you do not grow if you produce worker for a while, you catch up and overtake others fast once you connect the resources.
Do not be afraid to trade techs if it benefits you, but do not overdo it. You really do not want to miss out being the first on a tech like Liberalism, where it matters if you get it first. Or have the opponent end up with the wonder you wanted because of it.
Also look up civfanatics.com, you can learn a lot from there.
This seems to be the key to success. It's also the thing that I never really enjoy or do well at, which is why I'm mediocre at this game.
In short:
Shore city, precious metals, river, flood plains=Commerce city. Heaps of cottages. Bank, library, harbor, etc.
Lots of grassland, rivers, floodplains, food resources=GP farm. Go for tons of farms to increase population, so that you can afford to use specialists to get GP points
Hills, forests=Production city. Mines. Duh.
It sounds so easy when you look at it like that. But you rarely get perfect examples. And, taken to the extreme, it's not much fun. If I want my production city to have a library, they'll get a library, dammit!
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
I try to get a religion right off, usually Hinduism because I'll lose out on Buddhism. I build a warrior as my first unit and when my first city gets to be a 2 or 3 I'll start a settler and try to expand early. More cities means more production which means more mans. You do have to be careful about your economy and after getting Hinduism (or Judism if I get boned) I try to work towards currency unless I'm a nation that has special units early. When I have two or three cities and one is a level three or four I'll build my first worker. My second city usually cranks out guys while my first works on Settlers. I'll usually go Settler on a level 2 city, Warrior and grow to level 3 (even if you have to que something), Settler, warrior and growth to level 4.
Land is valuable. They aren't making any more of it.
It's vital for moving from doing well to absolutely dominating, but even without specializing cities up the yin-yang, you should still be able to slaughter the AI on Noble and Prince.
I've just gotten into civ4 never playing a prior civ game, the first maybe 3 or 4 games i got rolled however on this game I am dominating them to no end...I must have like 10 cities or something right now, but it's quite fun, takes a while towards the end but it's very fun...also can you go into more about what this mod does for me? I'm at work and there ain't to many sites i can get on, thanks
Here's the link to the site I downloaded it from (it's another forum) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171398
Civs: http://kael.civfanatics.net/Civilizations.shtml
Religions: http://kael.civfanatics.net/Religions.shtml
It makes Civ 4 more like Dungeons and Dragons. You can create spellcasting units and create mana nodes to power them. One race is a group of vampires and you can feed on your cities for experience. Experience and unique units are a large part of the game. That is, you get xp a LOT easier than in normal Civ 4. Unique units can be exclusive to a civilization (the elves get some cool archer dude. The sea people get a unique ship that is badass and also a swashbuckling dude).
There's a wiki for it, but the link is currently dead.
Anway, I am familiar with all the concepts discussed here. The main issue I have is the enemy seems to be able to expand so much faster then me. When I have 4 cities, they have 8. They grab up the best spots right away, and if I travel far from my capital to get those spots, they either become too far to properly defend and are conquered, or they cost too much and I can not expand much at all.
My main issue is, how does the AI run 8 cities and still have science high enough to keep up or surpass me in the tech race? Meanwhile I have 4 cities and building a 5th would drop me to 70 or 60 percent science, all the while I am a nation with expansive tendencies so I suffer less costs to manage cities and have towns surrounded by gold mines.
I can focus all my efforts on moneys and still not have enough to expand while the AI seems to be able to at a whim. How do I not go poor?
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
It doesn't. The AI economy typically tanks during the late-early game or the early mid-game. That's not even a bad thing. So what if you have to set the slider down to 50%? When you're twice as big as someone who has it set at 90%, you're still outteching them and now you're also outgrowing and outproducing them.
And this still doesn't explain much or any of how you're playing. Having a Shrine is the easiest way to keep your economy healthy. If you have two and spread both, then you shouldn't ever have any economy issues. Rushing the Minaret can also help if you've been doing a good job with your religion. Later game, building Wallstreet in your Shrine city also can keep a small economy afloat on its own.
Otherwise, the general rule is "build more cottages." Your cities cannot support a large population at the start because of unhappiness and disease, so why bother having oodles and oodles of farms when they're just going to cause problems? Expand close to your capital first and keep cities connected. Diversify your resources and don't drop a city down far away just because you want something. That Stone is not worth the 5 gold a turn you'll be paying in upkeep for the next 300 turns. Don't worry about overlapping borders, few cities are actually going to reach the 21 people that you'd need to work every square, and by the time you can support those populations, you should be abusing specialists anyway. Make sure to build courthouses since the upkeep reduction is drastic, especially on longer games. And if your economy looks like it's going to tank and you have a weak neighbor, send your military in to pillage the hell out of their lands for money, seize their workers for your infrastructure and then they'll be all the easier to conquer when you do have the economy to support it.
One thing I've found when I'm (or me + friends are) playing one (or two) difficulties above where I feel comfortable is that I really need to go on the offensive early; the easiest time to attack in the entire game is early on if you tech-rush to swordsmen, which absolutely destroy anything until they can defend with longbows/crossbows. If you go for iron working, then towards catapults, you can often take out a decent chunk of at least one ai, sometimes two, before they can get enough tech/defenses up
But yeah, having a holy city for a religion + the wonder is a very nice boost (I recommend going for Hinduism, for some reason the AI always seems to go Buddhism first); other than that it's hard to give specific advice
Swordsmen are okay, but Axemen and HArchers are also perfectly servicible invasionary forces, especially if the enemy doesn't have copper/horses and Axemen can then just sit and defend better than the other two. Just remember... homogony of units for attacking, heterogeny for units for defense. Send a spearman to escort your axe swarm, but don't split into 50/50 axes and harchers because then you're just getting penalized twice over.
The biggest problem with this strategy is that if you have any blank squares on the coast then make sure you take control of them quickly and don't let any ships land, its just bad business having an enemy army slowly building up on your border.
the biggest problem with this style is that you get a LOT of enemies, last game of civ 4 it ended up in an awesomely gigantic assault on my continent by everybody else with huge naval battles as i fought to keep them from landing in my territory, and then holding off huge armies and slowly giving ground and retreating back to my capital as i waited for the Space Space to reach alpha centauri
I know this is a bit of an old post but I am trying to improve at civ 4 as I am having a similar problem on noble, I am not trying to disagree with you as obviously I am not great at the game, but when you say don't garrison the unit straight away, I used to do this when I used to disable barbarians, but I decided not to be a wimp and play properly, but I was having barbarian problems and was a little worried if I left my city unguarded to look for huts, my city might get attacked by barbarians, also is it true that you get better results from different units?
barbs rarely invade your cities that early on. You don't have to worry about animals, only the military units.