Any tips for Civ IV?

[Born2bwire]

Yeah, I know. I missed the boat on this one but I picked up the full set when it was on sale on Steam a bit ago and it has started consuming my free time. I played a bit of Civ II back in the day but it has been a while. Lately thought it seems that I have plateaued in my skill with the game at this point. I can manage to eke out a victory usually in the Noble difficulty setting in Civ 4 (not very impressive score wise though)but trying that in Beyond the Sword is really reaming me out.

You guys have any suggestions? I think my primary problem is first that I am not aggressive enough in building a military and that I lose interest in the micromanagement as time goes on. I start out directing all of the assignments of my citizens, scouts and workers. But eventually I get so exasperated at the micromanagement that I let the computer take over and things are probably stagnating because of it.

 

[Terzo]

Civfanatics

There's a ton of reading you can do. Personally, I never got better than noble, and even then I was only able to win a few times. If I wanted to win consistently I had to play on the difficulty under noble, whatever it's called.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

You don't need to micromanage to win, but it does help to set your city governor so the workers will build what you want. If you click the gold icon workers will build cottages, hammer icon they build mines and workshops. Use waypoints (left-click city bar, then shift + right-click the tile you want them to go to) for military units so you don't have to manage every single one that is built.

Learn to specialize your cities: build at least one hammer city (preferably coastal for water units also) that builds nothing but military units. Settle Great Generals there, build Heroic Epic and Drydock. Do not build any unnecessary buildings or units in that city. Do likewise for Commerce or Science (usually capital) cities.

Don't waste time researching dead-end techs. Archery can be traded for later, and you need strong offensive units to fight offensively or defensively.

Catapults are a god-send! Eg, was playing against Montezuma last night, and despite him being Pleased, he declared war and dumped his stack-of-doom (~20 total jags, cats, spears, axes) at one cities' doorstep. I was expecting him and was prepared with my own SOD: War Chariots, Axemen, and several Cats (zero archers). I unloaded the cats first, then hit him with axes and chariots until there was nothing left. I razed one hill city that was garrisoned with several Longbows, then took his capital using a spy (for City Revolt), cats, axes, chariots, and two Maces. He immediately gave up Feudalism, Currency, 100 gold, 14g/turn, and another city for peace.

Do not chase/convert religion unless you have to! Let the AI hate each other for their religious differences, not you. Only convert if you are threatened by a strong, neighboring civ ("Our god can beat your god"), or if you can convert to the most popular religion (for diplomacy purposes).

Learn to use the Whip properly! If your city is unhappy, whip a happiness building. If you need defenders, whip them. Need to beat a rival to a prime piece of land/resource, whip that settler. Just be sure to whip enough citizens when you do in order to keep the city happy.

Learn to trade! Just got a tech nobody else has? Trade it for as much as you can get for it. Only keep it to yourself if you are building the wonder it allows, then trade it just before you complete your wonder. If a rival has no techs for trade, trade them a tech or two to declare war on another civ. Proper trading is one of the most important aspects of the game.

I would also recommend watching TheMeInTeam's Civ IV videos on Youtube. His videos helped me go from Monarch to Emperor.

 

[Born2bwire]

You don't need to micromanage to win, but it does help to set your city governor so the workers will build what you want. If you click the gold icon workers will build cottages, hammer icon they build mines and workshops. Use waypoints (left-click city bar, then shift + right-click the tile you want them to go to) for military units so you don't have to manage every single one that is built.

Learn to specialize your cities: build at least one hammer city (preferably coastal for water units also) that builds nothing but military units. Settle Great Generals there, build Heroic Epic and Drydock. Do not build any unnecessary buildings or units in that city. Do likewise for Commerce or Science (usually capital) cities.

Don't waste time researching dead-end techs. Archery can be traded for later, and you need strong offensive units to fight offensively or defensively.

Catapults are a god-send! Eg, was playing against Montezuma last night, and despite him being Pleased, he declared war and dumped his stack-of-doom (~20 total jags, cats, spears, axes) at one cities' doorstep. I was expecting him and was prepared with my own SOD: War Chariots, Axemen, and several Cats (zero archers). I unloaded the cats first, then hit him with axes and chariots until there was nothing left. I razed one hill city that was garrisoned with several Longbows, then took his capital using a spy (for City Revolt), cats, axes, chariots, and two Maces. He immediately gave up Feudalism, Currency, 100 gold, 14g/turn, and another city for peace.

Do not chase/convert religion unless you have to! Let the AI hate each other for their religious differences, not you. Only convert if you are threatened by a strong, neighboring civ ("Our god can beat your god"), or if you can convert to the most popular religion (for diplomacy purposes).

Learn to use the Whip properly! If your city is unhappy, whip a happiness building. If you need defenders, whip them. Need to beat a rival to a prime piece of land/resource, whip that settler. Just be sure to whip enough citizens when you do in order to keep the city happy.

Learn to trade! Just got a tech nobody else has? Trade it for as much as you can get for it. Only keep it to yourself if you are building the wonder it allows, then trade it just before you complete your wonder. If a rival has no techs for trade, trade them a tech or two to declare war on another civ. Proper trading is one of the most important aspects of the game.

I would also recommend watching TheMeInTeam's Civ IV videos on Youtube. His videos helped me go from Monarch to Emperor.

Ok, thanks a lot. Mainly I was wanting to hear if you could be successful without such huge micromanagement. I also did not know that the city management directed the worker's too. I thought it just prioritized the allocation of citizens. I do need to learn to be better at specializing cities and managing my early growth. Although I think I can do a reasonable start, even in BTS. I've got the Code of Law catapult down and with a spiritual civ I can easily grab two hinduism, judiasm and COL would give me taoism. Then grabbing alphabet I can then try to trade for the early techs that I skipped. The tech and cultural boosts from these give me a good starting lead. But it seems that in BTS the expansionism of the AI is much more aggressive and I have not caught on well to counter them.

Oh, there's one thing that I have been trying to experiment with is that I try to preserve my forests so that I can place logging camps on them. The eventual boosts that you get in hammers for the camps as you gain techs (like railroad and such) makes them great for manufacturing but at the same time it means a large lag in development of the tile.

 

[QuantumPion]

Build a worker first. Scout out your neighbors immediately. Find good city sites in their direction, and grab 2-3 of them as soon as your city grows to size 3ish. Sites with plenty of food, rivers, or gold/gems/silver are especially important. Once you have neighboring civs sealed off, then settle other good sites within your territory as you can afford them. Aim for 6 good cities (plus a couple extra smaller cities if you have the room). Make cottages your primary improvement for cities with sufficient food. Make sure to build workers in between settlers, you need ~1.5 workers for each city, and more if they are jungle sites.

Your tech path should start out first with worker techs that you need to improve your land (e.g. animal husbandry, mining, etc). Then get bronze working (for chopping trees), pottery (for cottages), writing (to sign open borders and make libraries), and alphabet. Once you get alphabet, trade it with other civs for remaining techs (e.g. iron working). Then start working towards currency (for trade routes) and code of laws (for courthouses). Using slavery to whip courthouses and possibly markets is important early on.

In order to avoid early wars, use diplomacy. Make nice with your bordering neighbors, primarily through religion. Adopt the same religion they have or try to get them into the same religion as yourself to foster peace. Alternatively, get your neighbors to adopt opposite religions and bribe them into war against each other.

Your next teching path is on city development. Get techs you need to make your cities happy (e.g. calendar if you have the resources available, and/or monarchy for hereditary rule garrisons). Have at least one city set to have two scientist specialists until you get a great scientist. Use him to build an academy in your capital (or alternatively, if your capital is a production city with low commerce, build the academy in your best commerce city and also build a new palace there). Then simply tech towards liberalism. Switch to bureacucracy when you get civil service to make your capital a monster science city. Furthermore, get 6 universities up so you can build Oxford in your capital as well to stack on the multipliers.

Once you win the liberalism race, head towards democracy. If you won the liberalism race and got nationalism, building the taj mahal is convenient because it usually finishes right when you are reach to make a massive civic swap into universal suffrage, free speech, emancipation, and possibly free market and free religion. The last two are more dependent on your current situation (e.g. organized religion is probably stronger for building all the universities/observatories/factories etc and you may not have free market yet).

Continue teching up through assembly line. Crank out factories and coal plants in all your cities. Here, you can decide how to win the game. If you have a strong tech lead and peaceful neighbors, space race is the easiest choice. Otherwise, start cranking out infantry and artillery (and later tanks & bombers) to take out your neighbors. You should be set from here on! Good luck.

 

[QuantumPion]

Ok, thanks a lot. Mainly I was wanting to hear if you could be successful without such huge micromanagement. I also did not know that the city management directed the worker's too. I thought it just prioritized the allocation of citizens. I do need to learn to be better at specializing cities and managing my early growth. Although I think I can do a reasonable start, even in BTS. I've got the Code of Law catapult down and with a spiritual civ I can easily grab two hinduism, judiasm and COL would give me taoism. Then grabbing alphabet I can then try to trade for the early techs that I skipped. The tech and cultural boosts from these give me a good starting lead. But it seems that in BTS the expansionism of the AI is much more aggressive and I have not caught on well to counter them.

Oh, there's one thing that I have been trying to experiment with is that I try to preserve my forests so that I can place logging camps on them. The eventual boosts that you get in hammers for the camps as you gain techs (like railroad and such) makes them great for manufacturing but at the same time it means a large lag in development of the tile.

I didn't know governor settings affected auto workers either until recently either. However, I tend to not automate my workers though until all my cities are fully improved since I want to focus on cottages without making the city focus on commerce (which can sometimes cause it to nerf its production).

I wouldn't save forests for lumbermills normally, with the exception being cities that are settled late, or cities that don't have enough food to work the tiles anyway before biology. In other words, if you have to chose between keeping forests or working an improved tile, the latter is far better. The lumbermill is a good improvement, but having one for 1/4 of the game is not as good as having a mine or cottage for 3/4 of the game.

 

[Born2bwire]

What do you do with all those workers when your improvements have finally outstripped your populations? Sometimes I get to a point where I just feel like I don't have anything that I need the workers to do at the moment.

 

[paperfist]

What do you do with all those workers when your improvements have finally outstripped your populations? Sometimes I get to a point where I just feel like I don't have anything that I need the workers to do at the moment.

Stack them and put them into sleep mode someplace on the map where you won't forget them. I don't know how far into the game you are, but as your tech progresses you have the opportunity to re-work tiles into other improvements. Don't disband them as you'll need a healthy pile to build railroads with.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

I've got the Code of Law catapult down and with a spiritual civ I can easily grab two hinduism, judiasm and COL would give me taoism.

Here's the trick with Religion in this game: If you horde them the AI will all convert to the same religion. This makes them best buddies, and they trade more while fighting less. You need to leave as many religions as possible for the AI to get, so they will hopefully all be different religions. When they fight (and they will!) you will tech faster while getting stronger. There is nothing wrong with having a religion in your cities, you can still build temples/monasteries for happiness/culture, just do not convert your civ unless you have to.

What do you do with all those workers when your improvements have finally outstripped your populations? Sometimes I get to a point where I just feel like I don't have anything that I need the workers to do at the moment.

I leave them automated and just forget about them, but I also set them to leave improved tiles unchanged and/or leave forests (it's in the options). When I need to make changes I'll hunt some down and manually direct them what to do. One thing you should avoid doing is improving every tile early on. You won't use them all until the city is full, so it's just wasted worker turns, and those turns are huge in the early game. Focus on the resources first, get a couple mines/cottages, a few roads, move them to other cities, and backfill later.

As for forests, I only rarely save them for later (for national park), or use them for building wonders. Lumbermills are great, but not worth saving for them. Workshops are great substitutes.