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How do you win a Civ 4 game?
Hotlead Junkie
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Obviously I know what the winning conditions are, such as defeating all the other civs, having the most landmass, winning the space-race, etc, but every time I try and do well at a Civilization 4 map I usually lag behind horribly. If I'm lucky, I may snag a few cities or even destroy and entire civ, but no matter what I try I can't seem to catch up to the civs at the top. Starting wars between opponents seems a good way to slow them down but it's not always possible unless you are very powerful yourself.
I'm playing Factal maps, normal speed on Warlord 99.9% of the time and have been playing the game for a week, on average one nearly full game (I get to around 1600AD most times before I realise I won't be able to win but do play a few to the end) a day, probably around 25 hours of play so far but I still haven't won a game.
I've read plenty of tips, walkthroughs and guides but can't seem to do well still. I wouldn't mind hearing what kind of starting and midgame stratergies you guys and gals use to keep yourself at the top. The best I've done was when I pumped out settlers and placed them near the borders of other Civ's cities, slowly enveloping the towns and rescources with influence, trying to 'crawl' my way across the map. A quick settler/cultral expansion (using creative and industrious traits for easy culture and 50% faster wonder construction) but I still lagged behind when it came to mid-game.
I really enjoy the game but it's getting kinda depressing no matter what I try I keep getting my ass kicked.
I'm playing Factal maps, normal speed on Warlord 99.9% of the time and have been playing the game for a week, on average one nearly full game (I get to around 1600AD most times before I realise I won't be able to win but do play a few to the end) a day, probably around 25 hours of play so far but I still haven't won a game.
I've read plenty of tips, walkthroughs and guides but can't seem to do well still. I wouldn't mind hearing what kind of starting and midgame stratergies you guys and gals use to keep yourself at the top. The best I've done was when I pumped out settlers and placed them near the borders of other Civ's cities, slowly enveloping the towns and rescources with influence, trying to 'crawl' my way across the map. A quick settler/cultral expansion (using creative and industrious traits for easy culture and 50% faster wonder construction) but I still lagged behind when it came to mid-game.
I really enjoy the game but it's getting kinda depressing no matter what I try I keep getting my ass kicked.
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Build cottages on all grasslands that doesn't need farms and work them. Get a religion, building the oracle to get free code of laws is the best way to go since it doesn't stunt early development. Spread your religion, rely on stonehenge/oracle to bring in a great prophet. Found your religious building and enjoy swimming in your pit of gold.
Keep you tech slider at 100% the whole game, build a few cities up as production centres. Pump out plenty of military but just use them to keep your borders safe. Don't concern yourself with the petty goings on of the other civs.
Win the space race in the 1800s or 1700s if you're really good. Even if you aren't you'll still make it by the mid 1900s.
1) There is a delicate balance between your economy and your growth. While ideally you want as much space as possible to grab land and/or resources, you really need to keep an eye on your economy. It's generally okay to go negative as long as you have a good gold buffer to keep up a good research rate. Just keep in mind that cities will take awhile before they become profitable. I would say make sure you keep a settler ready to claim land in case you see someone encroaching on land you want and to maximize your growth when your economy can manage it. That said, I would say settlers take a back seat other things like an army or structures or wonders.
2) Specialize your cities. When you first start off keep an eye out of good areas with ideal resources and placing so that you can specialize cities for growth, economy, science, and production. With that in mind, don't just build random buildings in each city (this isn't as big a deal in lower difficulties). A production city for example needs to focus on say military units early on so try to build a barracks and pump out military units. Be aware that you'll want to switch this up a little so that it doesn't lag too far behind in culture (especially if it is a border city). Economy cities are important too.
3) Economy. Build up your economy. If you've founded a religion, spread it. Send out missionaries everywhere and get that founding city it's wonder. It will generate money for you. This is a good thing.
4) Wonders. Don't just try to build as many wonders as possible. Again try to specialize and concentrate bonuses.
5) Structure: Be sure your cities are close enough that they can support each other with their garrisons. Build your early roads with this in mind. Have your military production cities clear paths to your border cities. Protect valuable resources especially if they are near the borders; recognize what resources are valuable for the times. Iron/copper are very important near the beginning of the game. I'm always willing to sacrifice some economy/research to grab vital resources. Reinforce whatever town or improvement that holds this resource
6) Technonolgy. I always keep my research at max value without my economy going negative. If I have a large pool of gold, I'll go slightly negative. Begin to learn what technology give the most valuable bonuses. I'm always a fan of tech that gives me free tech or passive bonuses like faster road movement. I tend to like getting Optics quickly so I can explore the seas and get that bonus to naval movement as well. Pick what suits your style.
7) Combat. If you out tech your enemies, combat is easy. If you're about equal though, the AI can still be defeated by concentrated combat units; siege units are invaluable. If you're having trouble with combat, build up a decent combat force to destroy defenders and occupy towns, and then just pump you siege and defensive units. To a point, you can throw masses of siege units at cities to reduce their defenders and clean up. I always keep some mobile offensive forces near my borders though that I don't commit. Just in case. Again, specialize your units with their upgrades. Have city crushing units, have a healing unit that does little combat, have several defensive units to escort your siege units and protect your combat units and occupy captured cities. Combat can be easier if you customize your game so that you get more turns. This makes technology (especially combat tech) more useful as tech feels like it stays relevant longer.
8) Great citizen: Specialize or patch cities with these guys. I tend to use these guys for passive bonuses. Priests for example are there for religious founding city wonders or used to boost production in cities. Great Artists are great for +culture early game; otherwise they are there for big culture bombs. Great generals are terrific to settle in your military production cities. Merchants I always use to boost my economy cities; extra food and gold per turn? yes please.
In the end it's all about balancing the facets of your civ. Build up military units, but you can't build too many (unless you're going to war) or you'll just end up crippling your economy. Specialize cities but don't forget that they can't be too focused on one thing otherwise they lag behind in culture/economy, etc...
That should put you on a good path towards the space race victory. It's generally decent for domination too, since if you tech like a motherfucker you can be rolling over their macemen with tanks and mechanized infantry.
While I guess this is possible on a low difficulty, since you can win the tech rush to everything and get any wonder you want, it's still really terrible advice, not to mention relatively impossible in the early game. And stupid. Two cities at 50% tech is better than one city at 100%. And since reality is that it takes about four cities to drop your economy to that point... yeah. Oh, and if you're at 100% tech, then cities produce no gold (aside from shrines and wonder effects) and markets/grocers/banks don't get to add their bonus.
Most likely, you're not expanding enough/fast enough and you're relying too heavily on building lots of useless buildings or military units. Don't build things you don't need. Monuments are nigh worthless 95% of the time, 100% of the time if you're playing creative. Barracks and city walls also don't need to be built everywhere. This goes triply so for Wonders. It's good to grab a religious one early since Prophets are pretty much the best GP (especially for industrious civs), but don't build them just because you think you can.
On that low of a difficulty, you can expand like a fucking weed and really only need to concentrate your strength in your border towns. Even then, unless you're expecting a war, more than a couple up to date units is overkill. Usually, a good rule of thumb is to build your first settler when your cap hits size 3. You can use the AI as a judge of when to expan too. They expand a little stupider than they should, but if you try to stay the same size as them, with more intelligent placement and resource utilization (along with the difficulty bonuses), then you'll easily come out on top. It also sounds like you might be expanding too far out, which will slaughter your economy. Keep your cities centered around your capital at the start and prioritize rivers and food resources at the start. If you do need to go slightly off the beaten path for a needed military or production resource, do it, but it's rarely worth the economy hit. The worker AI is also more than sufficient for that difficulty, so just automate them if you want. You should be building (or capturing) at least 1 worker/city for the early to mid part of the game.
Also, there is another thing I'd like to know, what determines your score? To the best of my knowledge it's based on how much culture and tech you have plus some other factors I'm not sure about. I've noticed when I trade a tech to a civ they get a nice points boost, so it it a good idea to reasearch a ton of techs even if it's just for the point bonuses? I'm just trying to get my head around how the scoring system works.
Hover over it and it'll pop up.
Population + Tech + Wonders controlled + Land controlled.
1. Are you using "play now?" or Custom Games? If the latter, check to make sure that based on your chosen map size that ALL AI slots are filled. If not, the AI will expand to metric fuckton proportions quickly, since there will be empty spaces where other Civs "should" start.
2. Another custom game question: Are you using barbarians? Most times, especially if I'm playing with other humans I'll turn them off due to the nuisance factor, but in AI games I turn them on, and sometimes make them raging. They seem to harass AI players just as much if not more than human players.
3. Not really a solution, but do you own Beyond the Sword? It adds a lot of enhancements for dealing with other players through the enhanced espionage mechanics and earlier diplomatic victory (from the new wonders that can be built).
4. If you do feel that AI is gearing up for an attack, don't just stock up on military units in your cities. Get them out on the borders, make them visible. I've found that even if the AI is about to open a can, placing units along your borders can actually dissuade them, or at the very least make them come into your territory in a roundabout way that will make it easier for you to shift defenses.
Scoring I think takes in account several things; I think some website out there lists it all, but I believe they take into account: your difficulty, how fast you beat the game, what kind of win you had, how far you are in the tech tree, your culture, your economy, the happiness of your citizens. Essentially anything that can be used to compare your civilization to other civilizations. I wouldn't worry about score though. Work on your strategy and then you can refine it to get a better score after you begin to learn how to win.
i have the hardest time playing these games once i get more than a little ways in. way too many units, taking any sort of break makes you forget what you were planning on doing with half of them. i just get bungled up each time. but i do have Civ 4, Colonization, AND the 360 version. i need to read a FAQ or something on how to better play these things.
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Research is your god.
Like it was said, lots of little things, but the biggest contributors are # of wonders, size (both population and square footage), research, and total culture score.
here is the super secret method for winning civ four games on any difficulty up to emperor.
Any time you are going to build something, look at its hammer price. Think "how many axeman (cavarly/riflement/etc.) can I build for the price of this. Then build that many axeman and go kill an AI player.
Really its that simple. This advice works better than saying "build more military."
If you want a little more detail, each of your cities should have a granary, a forge, and a barracks in it. Any city with low production should have cottages on almost every tile (this is simplistic, but intentionally so)
Research? As long as you have a reasonably up to date military you will catch up on other techs even if you fall behind. Having a huge empire will allow you to quickly catch back up in research
Wonders: Ignore them. Eventually you will learn which are the few that are actually worth their production cost, but for now just get in a habit of not worrying about them. Don't build them, don't waste time researching the techs to get to them. You will eventually take them all away from their current owners.
Plan your wars: Be flexible, but you should generally plan one war with just axeman, then wage another once you get catapults, another once you get trebuchets and knights, another once you get cannons and cavalry, and one more in the modern era. Each war should roughly translate to an AI player dying. By the modern era you will be hugely unstoppable.
Eventually you will learn which AIs build a lot of military units, which ones make reliable allies, etc. When you war, go for the kill. Even if you think "gah im falling behind on research because my money is being spent on upkeep" don't worry. You will catch back up once you cottage up the conquered land.
Emperor+ difficulty is a bit more complicated than that, but honestly, for anything below monarch it really is this simple.
I do want to try a game where I win a culture war.
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
I can't remember, but did they later add an option to only allow the country that researches a tech to trade it? That might be a better option if so.
This is only the best strategy if you start out with a nearby neighbor who rushes archery. Otherwise, warriors are almost always enough to rush a capital as long as it's not on a hill or similar. Or if they're too far away for you to get warriors mobilized quickly enough, then it'll probably do more harm than good to take them that early since it'll tank your economy for a long while.
I personally prefer to push the religion/science side of things to take care of future major potential economic and happiness issues, and then use warriors to snipe workers off the borders (assuming I find them too late to just take the capital with them outright) and then harry them into submission. A couple fortified warriors dumped on forests/hills/across rivers (or any combination thereof) next to their capital nearly completely locks down their ability to expand and get the bronze they'd need to push you away for as long as you want. Annnnd makes them easy pickings for whenever you do decide to snap them up.
Of course, I also prefer to play Inca when given the option, and they're absolute gods at this thanks to their advantage over archers. Sniping AI workers off of borders in the early game should be a staple of any playstyle though. It props you up while severely retarding your neighbors' growth. Who cares if they don't like you? You're going to be conquering them in the near future anyway.
And yes, Voro, BtS added the option to turn off tech brokering. No clue if it was included in the upates for the others though.
- Land Type: A heavy ocean game is radically different from a pangaea game, or even a continent game. You need to keep this in mind as the more landmass, the more enemies you're likely to have on your continent. On the other hand, the less landmass the more likely you're gonna have a Civ right next door.
- Civilization - Certain Civs are better are certain things, and the type of victory you go for should reflect this. Special units and building are also important, as they are sort of a guideline as to when you should be making large military pushes
- Civilization Leader - Just like the Civs themselves, certain leaders are better at things. For example, a Charismatic (Free Radio tower, bonus to culture) and a philosophical (better chance of Great People) leader should be operating under a different agenda than a Industrial/Expansive leader. Focus on your leader's strengths, even if they won't win the game for you the will make it easier
- Never trade maps, and dont have open borders with your neighbors until you are FULLY colonized. Seriously, theres nothing worse than opening your borders and having some asshole steal that prime spot in the middle of your country. Sure, you can take over the city but its a fucking hassle. Maps, I'm just selfish. Plus other civs do not value their maps highly, so they're usually pretty cheap to buy with gold.
-Make use of the landtypes. Hills make great cities/forts, mountains make great chokepoints. Try to deny other civs access to uncolonized areas. If no natural barrier exists, you can do this by building a wall of Warriors and not having open borders.
- Scout. Scout scout scout scout scout. Knowing what the others are doing, where they're colonizing, what materials they have access to is very important. That and you get goody huts.
- Use diverse armies. Sure, in the early game an army of all Axemen is a terrifying sight, but later on you're going to need more than that. At the very least, you're going to need some units with the bombard ability to take down city defenses, and collateral damage is fantastic.
- While I don't use cavalry to attack cities (generally) you should certainly have some running around enemy territory, causing as much damage as you can. Harassing units (even if the unit isn't destroyed, the damage will be helpful) is great, and I also use them for pillaging squares.
- PILLAGE! You get money, you piss of the enemy, and chances are the AI built something fuckstupid there anyways so you can just rebuild it later.
- Upgrades are incredibly important. The difference between a Warrior with 3 +strength upgrades vs a Warrior with a +City Attack and +Melee attack is HUGE (as in the later is far superior). Upgrade your units to reflect what role they're going to do, and I'm not just talking about Defense vs Offense. Mix up the abilities, and try to have specialty units.
- Defend veteran units. They're worth a 100 times their gold cost.
- I'm not huge on Espionage acts, but the knowledge you can get from them is very useful, and helps on deciding when, where, and how you're going to attack something.
- Dont be afraid to rush for certain research things. Being the first to discover a religion can be useful, but don't overly focus on it unless you're going for a culture victory. I will generally rush all the early Land Improvement related techs (which includes bronze working) and then see what I need.
-Vary the purpose of your cities. Unless you're winning by a huge margin, chances are you're not going to be able to build all the improvements in one city. Chances are, you dont even want to. A coastal city is great for Research/Cash, while cities in hills/forests are great for production. Keep this in mind when colonizing.
- DO NOT AUTOMATE THOSE GODDAMN FUCKING WORKERS - Their AI is goddamn retarded. At best, have maybe 1 or 2 on automated trade network, but thats it. If you find you have too many workers, don't automate them, delete them.
- Learn to love Forests. Seriously, they're goddamn fantastic.
The loss of a worker early on can be crippling. Steal one, declare peace when you can, develop your city, steal more, declare peace, eventually just take their capitol. You get a big boost to your early development this way instead of building those workers and settlers from scratch.
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Ugh. I disagree with so much of what you said.
A.) Diverse armies are only good for defense. On offense, they're rubbish since you'll always be activating the defender's bonuses. A few siege weapons are always good if you're up against a big stack, but there's rarely any point to mixing other units in.
B.) Trade maps all you want. You can see what resources they've got just by looking at the foreign advisor screen. By the time you're even able to trade maps, the resource grab rush is over. If you haven't grabbed some awesome spot by then, you deserve to lose it. Do note that they'll pay out the nose for your maps of other continents. Abuse that if you get a jump on the sea exploration.
C.) Scouting is overrated. You can't do a damned thing about crap far away from you and other civs will easily beat you to the huts, so it's not worth wasting units just to look at things that you can't affect for information that the foreign advisor screen will tell you anyway. Those resources are better spent conquering your enemies or building your empire.
Caveat: Getting a jump on the sea techs for making contact with the rest of the world is good for the tech bonus.
D.) Veteran units are not that special. Assuming they have a useful promotion, they should be spearheading your attacks against entrenched enemies early on, not waiting in the wings for better odds. Even doing a little bit of damage means a huge change in the numbers for your other units. Weak units, on the other hand, are more likely to do zero damage and be totally wasted in an attack against stronger units.
E.) Other civs can move through your units without open borders. A warrior wall stops them from doing jack.
F.) Don't pillage squares you're about to seize in the near future unless it cuts off a vital resource. Even if the AI has built something dumb there, you're still likely going to be working it and gaining the bonuses from it while you build something else on it.
G.) You should be looking at what you need, then researching accordingly so you can make use of your available resources, not the other way around. Even stuff like bronze working can usually wait if you're not expecting a major early war.
H.) Having/spreading a religion betters your economy, happiness, diplomacy, and culture, ie, no matter what victory you're going for, it'll help. If you think you can grab one, do it. Tile improvement techs can almost always wait because you don't have enough workers to take advantage of them, nor will you almost ever run out of good places to expand before being pretty much forced to pick up the resource techs. Simply building farms around your capital and roads to connect things will take the worker about the same time as it will to research at least four or five techs. There's little point in picking things up well before you're going to be using them.
I haven't played in a long time and I wanna get schooled.
Only concern is that it'll take monumentally long to complete one game.
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I see what you're saying, but chances are you're going to be activating some sort of bonus anyways. I'm not saying you need a ton of different units, but variety does help in case of a situational need. Build a ton of axemen, a handful of catapults, but also have a few horsemen and archers. Archers will defend the stack against any counters, and horsemen can finish off fleeing/withdrawn units (in addition to pillaging, which I'll get to later)
This is a personal thing for me I guess that comes from MP. I'll defer to you on this one.
I didnt say coddle the units. If they're the best chance you got, use them. But make sure you're getting the maximum bang for it, and pull them back if they've gotten injured quite a bit.
Sorry, this is one I didnt explain correctly. If I see a prime piece of property, I'll block it off with warriors and just declare war if any civs get to close. Yes, I know I could just as easily use those same warriors to launch an attack on the civ, but I dont want that, I just don't want them getting something. I declare war for the length of time it takes to get my settler over there, and then make peace.
I love pillaging. Don't go too wild with it, but I'll definitely destroy any mines in the area. That and the AI does build some stupid shit. And what do I care about needing to build stuff immediately? I just drop off a couple of the archers I've got in my attacking stacks.
Yeah, and while you're looking around you can research all the terrain modifications. I don't mean ALL the resource mods (like winerys and shit) but get the main terrains mods early (mining, farming, roads) and then a couple of the ones near you (usually a pasture). This can easily be done in the early portion of the game. And I consider Bronze working important because I want to make sure I get some in my early territory.
If you think you can get it, of course go for it. If you can think you can get any tech first that comes with a bonus. But don't sweat it if you can't be the discoverer. You can just adopt their religion, and as it always seems to be a border city that becomes the holy city, chances are you can just take it over relatively early.
Apparently I build a lot more workers than you. Also, I really like mines early on.
On Win7, mine popped up saying it had compatibility problems, but then it ran fine.
If you want to do things OPTIMALLY. For Prince and below though, it's not really necessary.
No problems here on Vista.
- stealing Workers... even if it declares war, who cares, just ask for a peace treaty shortly thereafter
- play defensively for at least the first half of the game... basically, ignore the other civs if they're asking for alliances or war declarations on people they don't like and don't worry about taking over or conquering civs; focus on civ happiness (so your main diplomatic talks are trade routes) and have at least one science-focused and one production-focused city
I generally find my research is then several steps ahead of the other civs, and plus my culture is so ridiculously potent that I swallow cities adjacent to my civ without any war or stuff like that... then, depending on the victory I want, I focus on accomplishing the objective, whether it's churning out troops or building space stuff
A couple of other things that usually help are spreading religion (you don't have to worry too much about founding it, but if you do you get some nice bonses), pillaging mines to eliminate enemy military advantage (so they don't have a key resource needed to build a certain unit), and scouting like a crazy person so that I can collect all the barbarian huts and see where everyone is on the map.
You can get by doing it, but its not great. If you are going to automate, use the Closest City version to limit the damage.
Wait, we don't have Planetbusters yet? Dammit!
I actually had no idea. That is interesting to know.
Forts can also hold planes, acts as locks for ships to pass through, and give the cultural defensive bonus. Mostly though, I just put them down on oil so that the moment combustion research finishes, my supply kicks in.