Civilization 4; I suck

[Dorkenstein]

I really needed this thread too. Months ago I was getting back into Civ 4 and completely overwhelmed. Fast forward to now, and I got somewhat more confident but I still know so little. Here are my questions...

1) How can I keep money in this game? I always seem to be utterly broke
2) How can I keep a city producing if it only seems to have food but no hammers and vice versa?
3) When should I be using special citizens? Each time I allocate one it seems to make my production times longer

Thanks.

 

[Cabages]

Are special citizens where it says you can make 3 citizens engineers or what not?

How do you assign them? Tutorial for this game really doesn't teach you much.

 

[minmaster]

the best help i got was by going to civfanatics and looking at the game threads where good players post their gameplay and what they did exactly. they usually have great tips for early game and how to effectively use specialists, and how to best tile manage. just spend hours reading up on some of these game threads and you will gain so much knowledge.

 

[you2]

can you provide link to one you thought was esp good?

Originally posted by: minmaster
the best help i got was by going to civfanatics and looking at the game threads where good players post their gameplay and what they did exactly. they usually have great tips for early game and how to effectively use specialists, and how to best tile manage. just spend hours reading up on some of these game threads and you will gain so much knowledge.

 

[minmaster]

dude just look em up, i haven't been there for couple years now. most of the ones with a lot of pages are good reads. besides, they seem to be down at the moment. but there is a section in the forum, i think under strategy that is full of these play-by-play accounts from good players.

in fact, you ought to discuss and learn strategies from civfanatics instead of here, imo. they're pretty helpful from what i recall.

 

[minmaster]

alright, here, go through the links in this thread and check out how the good players play.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=258697

this alone was the most helpful stuff for me.

 

[SunnyD]

If you need a guide to play Civ, you're simply not doing it right.

 

[you2]

I know i'm not doing it right; but I don't know how to do it right

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
If you need a guide to play Civ, you're simply not doing it right.

Civilization 4 is a very complex game. The guides at CivFanatics are extremely valuable for the player looking to move on to the next level.

Have you ever played the game on Monarch or higher?

 

[paperfist]

Originally posted by: daishi5

Originally posted by: you2
--
In one city you have 2 generals installed for bonus to experience, they don't stack so use them in another city next time.
--

I was told (earlier in this thread) that they do stack. Also my guys seem to level higher (as if they stacked). Are you sure generals don't stack?
--
I'll try going back to the 30 save game and see if I can't whack monty; that might help a lot. Also, you said that I should take civil serivce; should I actually switch gov't style or just research the skill?

Generals do stack, I usually stack them all in one military production city. If you want to send me a PM with an email, I wouldn't mind taking a look at those saves either.

Workers can be automated, (automated workers are ok, but not good) it is usually better to control the workers yourself, but if you don't know what to do with them, hitting the "A" key to automate them will have them do something useful. However, before you do go to options and select "automated workers leave old improvements" and "automated workers leave forests." That way you can chop trees when you need it or save them for the health, and your workers won't constantly change a farm to a workshop and back again.

You can stack them but you don't get extra XP...? I've never gotten more XP for my military units having a more then one general. Is this just a difficulty level issue?

 

[paperfist]

Originally posted by: Cabages
Are special citizens where it says you can make 3 citizens engineers or what not?

How do you assign them? Tutorial for this game really doesn't teach you much.

See this screen <---3rd post down.

On the right side near the middle see all those scientist? When you click the + sign next to them you take a citizen out from working the center screen of your land (the fat cross) and assign them to work as a specialist.

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
I really needed this thread too. Months ago I was getting back into Civ 4 and completely overwhelmed. Fast forward to now, and I got somewhat more confident but I still know so little. Here are my questions...

1) How can I keep money in this game? I always seem to be utterly broke
2) How can I keep a city producing if it only seems to have food but no hammers and vice versa?
3) When should I be using special citizens? Each time I allocate one it seems to make my production times longer

Thanks.

Try picking a leader with financial traits. Build cities near commerce bonuses. Build lots of cottages so long as your city can support them with food. The civics you pick and open borders will add to your coffers. Certain city improvements aid in gaining coin, it's also great to found a religion and later if you can get it make the city where you found a religion a holy city there are nice bonuses. The trick is to make 1 or 2 cities have all the financial bonuses as it's a cumulative effect.

Later in the game windmills, workshop, and some others will grant production bonuses. Certain great people, wonders and city improvements like factories will make production increases. If it's a high food city then make it specialize in great people, commerce or research and use slavery to whip out production.

Specialists are a balancing act. When you use one you loose production because it's one less tile you are working. Best place to use them are in food rich cities.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: SunnyD
If you need a guide to play Civ, you're simply not doing it right.

Civilization 4 is a very complex game. The guides at CivFanatics are extremely valuable for the player looking to move on to the next level.

Have you ever played the game on Monarch or higher?

I've actually never played Civ4 - yet. I can't imagine it's much terribly different than Civ1, 2 or 3 in terms of overall strategies though.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: SunnyD
If you need a guide to play Civ, you're simply not doing it right.

Civilization 4 is a very complex game. The guides at CivFanatics are extremely valuable for the player looking to move on to the next level.

Have you ever played the game on Monarch or higher?

I've actually never played Civ4 - yet. I can't imagine it's much terribly different than Civ1, 2 or 3 in terms of overall strategies though.

Then you have no place to comment that someone using a guide to play Civ4 is "simply not doing it right".

And you imagine wrong. Civ4 is significantly different from the previous versions. Someone who has played the older ones and Civ4 would know this.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: SunnyD
If you need a guide to play Civ, you're simply not doing it right.

Civilization 4 is a very complex game. The guides at CivFanatics are extremely valuable for the player looking to move on to the next level.

Have you ever played the game on Monarch or higher?

I've actually never played Civ4 - yet. I can't imagine it's much terribly different than Civ1, 2 or 3 in terms of overall strategies though.

Then you have no place to comment that someone using a guide to play Civ4 is "simply not doing it right".

And you imagine wrong. Civ4 is significantly different from the previous versions. Someone who has played the older ones and Civ4 would know this.

I'll give you that - with the "expansions" plausibly changing gameplay. I don't anticipate it will be significantly different than 3 though. And by no means am I saying that "winning" is easy either. Just saying that if you need a "guide", what's the point in playing?

 

[Dorkenstein]

I disagree that needing a guide means you're playing wrong. I can play most semi-complex games pretty easily, but the variables in Civ IV (and the expansions/mods for it) continue to vex and thwart me.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
I disagree that needing a guide means you're playing wrong. I can play most semi-complex games pretty easily, but the variables in Civ IV (and the expansions/mods for it) continue to vex and thwart me.

I was able to play it without a guide. Although I must admit that the game mechanics are not all intuitive, and as such difficult to figure out. But most of the base strategies are the same as with most 4X games. If you focus on building a great economy and good manufacturing capability, you can mostly walk all over the competition, as you will be able to build better armies quicker than anyone else when you need to, but only need to keep a small inexpensive army on standby when you are not at war. It is this flexibility that makes it a good strategy, and has thus far worked well for me in Civ and Gal Civ games. (Also Speed kills, even in Civ. If you can get from one city to the next very quickly, you can cut down even more on your standing army, which in turn decreases your logistics costs.)

EDIT: I know that I likened the strategy to a military victory, but it really goes with anything. You can build more research facilities quicker if you have to increase research at some point, or increase trade facilities, or any game mechanic with a strong manufacturing base (with a strong economic base to pay for it).

 

[photi]

Originally posted by: you2
Yea; I knew about that option but my guys always become unhappy and stop working. I wonder if I need to assign them earlier before the city grows; if stagnating city growth will keep them happy ?

no, except for rare occasions, you always want to keep you cities growing. the unhappiness of your citizens means you are not doing enough to appease them. depending on which civics you are using (eg despotism, monarch, republic, whether or not you are running beauracracy etc) as well as your religious status (eg theocracy, free religion, polytheism, monotheism etc), there are many ways to keep your people happy.

you need to find (and found, if possible) religion, build temples, colliseums, cathedrals, sometimes keeping troops in your cities keep the people happy, be aware of 'war weariness', commodities like spices, incense, ivory etc make people happy, having access to gold and silver make people happy and the list goes on and on. on top of that, certain buildings increase the effectiveness of commodities (like a forge will increase the effectiveness of gold (iirc) and also certain wonders add happy ppl (hanging gardens is +1 or +2 happy ppl for all your cities on the same continent). just be careful, because it is possible to build too much for the size of your cities, which will bankrupt you as each building requires gold per turn to operate.

finesse is the name of the game.

a person needs to learn to play a balanced game. war mongers have to do more than just fight wars, and the peaceful builder type needs to be prepared defensively because war will eventually come.

learn how to keep people happy and your cities will eventually grow into behemoth metropolises. in the end game, the goal should be to have no more than one or two unhappy people, whilst all the while receiving new tech advances every 4 turns (the minimum amount of turns required to research a tech). if you are not close to that in the end game, then there is much you can do to increase efficiency.

also, for the tax slider, in the early game what i do is have 100% science as my goal, and i keep it here until i am forced to start collecting revenue, at which point i gradually start increasing the tax rate in 10% increments to maintain a positive cash flow. in the early game a negative cash flow is okay if you have established a big reserve of gold. if you have reserve funds, it is okay to let it dwindle early on, down to nothing really, as gold is most useful for maintaining your empire (rush jobs with gold don't come until later).

i only use culture on the tax slider when my people are getting out of control or my cultural borders are not expanding fast enough to keep up my neighbors'. gold is easy to come by in the beginning either by selling your techs or commodities to the other civs (see the civfanatics forums for how to effectively sell your techs without equipping you neighbor to slaughter you) or finding gold in goody huts, or raiding barbarian encampments etc. it's fairly cheap to run a civ when your cities are still small and your infrastructure has not been built out, so revenue through taxes is not actually essential until your cities start getting to size 6 and beyond, but by then you should have lots of commerce coming in allowing you to convert some to gold for revenue while still having plenty of commerce being converted to beakers/science.

remember though in the early game, if possible keep your immediate neighbors weak by stunting their growth (hog the resources, land etc) and to the best of your abiblity take away their means of happiness. doing this will establish weak buffer states as your neighbors making your own civ easier to defend.

you can then trade with further away neighbors through trade routes as well as through diplomacy (for instance, sell one of your spices to a far away state for 3 gold per turn). that said, sometimes you have to trade with your immediate neighbors, as they might have a happiness resource you need, so you can usually trade one for one on commodities or whatever the AI will agree to. a lot of evil nation-state tactics can be developed using diplomacy.

 

[photi]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: SunnyD
If you need a guide to play Civ, you're simply not doing it right.

Civilization 4 is a very complex game. The guides at CivFanatics are extremely valuable for the player looking to move on to the next level.

Have you ever played the game on Monarch or higher?

no kidding! this game is so vast that to think you are going to start a thread over here and become a good player is...well, it is just not going to happen.

just off the top of my head, you can run a specialist economy, cottage economy, great people economy, i think some players may have developed a spy economy. i thnk it has been nerfed (it has been a year or two since i played), but there is what is called the civil service slingshot (look it up at civfanatics). some pople rush to metal casting, others rush techs to get certain military advantages, others rush techs to gain governing advantages. the game's complexity makes it hard to learn, but its complexity is precisely why this game is so fun to play.

 

[photi]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: SunnyD
If you need a guide to play Civ, you're simply not doing it right.

Civilization 4 is a very complex game. The guides at CivFanatics are extremely valuable for the player looking to move on to the next level.

Have you ever played the game on Monarch or higher?

I've actually never played Civ4 - yet. I can't imagine it's much terribly different than Civ1, 2 or 3 in terms of overall strategies though.

actually, not true at all. civ 4 is still civ, but it has so many more dimensions than the other incarnations of its namesake that it is almost a different game. in civ3, rexing was probably the single best strategy, whereas in Civ4, there is no single best strategy, there a hundred strategies, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. as a longtime fan of the game, i was quite impressed with Civ4.

 

[minmaster]

sunnyD, there are major changes in civ4. you most definitely could benefit from guides for help even coming as a civ3 vet. specialists and cottage economies for starters is a very hard concept to master.

 

[daishi5]

Originally posted by: Martimus

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
I disagree that needing a guide means you're playing wrong. I can play most semi-complex games pretty easily, but the variables in Civ IV (and the expansions/mods for it) continue to vex and thwart me.

I was able to play it without a guide. Although I must admit that the game mechanics are not all intuitive, and as such difficult to figure out. But most of the base strategies are the same as with most 4X games. If you focus on building a great economy and good manufacturing capability, you can mostly walk all over the competition, as you will be able to build better armies quicker than anyone else when you need to, but only need to keep a small inexpensive army on standby when you are not at war. It is this flexibility that makes it a good strategy, and has thus far worked well for me in Civ and Gal Civ games. (Also Speed kills, even in Civ. If you can get from one city to the next very quickly, you can cut down even more on your standing army, which in turn decreases your logistics costs.)

EDIT: I know that I likened the strategy to a military victory, but it really goes with anything. You can build more research facilities quicker if you have to increase research at some point, or increase trade facilities, or any game mechanic with a strong manufacturing base (with a strong economic base to pay for it).

The strategy in CIV4 is not whether or not to build a strong economy and army, but how to do those. You can do it several ways, religion can actually run an economy, you can use corporations in the modern era to actually cripple an opponents economy, the UN can be used to isolate an opponent from trades, and without the happy/health resources their economy will go belly up, you can do specialist and cottage economies, and many other choices. Civ4 did a wonderful job of leaving the same game in place, but at the same time, giving so many more options.

just be careful, because it is possible to build too much for the size of your cities, which will bankrupt you as each building requires gold per turn to operate.

This is completely wrong, buildings do not require maintenance any more. Cities require maintenance in two forms, they pay one penalty for the distance from the palace, and they pay for the number of cities. Every extra city makes every city cost more in maintenance. For example (completely fake numbers!) Your second city would make each city cost 1 gold, for a total of 2 gold cost, your 3rd would make each cost 2, for a total of 6 gold, 4 cities would cost 3 each, for a total of 12 gold. This example is made up, but as you see the more you expand the more you spend.

Oh, and I found a thread that I think will help the OP:

This is a thread about how to beat the lower difficulties, Noble class

It is aimed at players having a hard time getting started. And I think the OP could really benefit from it.

 

[photi]

Originally posted by: daishi5

just be careful, because it is possible to build too much for the size of your cities, which will bankrupt you as each building requires gold per turn to operate.

This is completely wrong, buildings do not require maintenance any more. Cities require maintenance in two forms, they pay one penalty for the distance from the palace, and they pay for the number of cities. Every extra city makes every city cost more in maintenance. For example (completely fake numbers!) Your second city would make each city cost 1 gold, for a total of 2 gold cost, your 3rd would make each cost 2, for a total of 6 gold, 4 cities would cost 3 each, for a total of 12 gold. This example is made up, but as you see the more you expand the more you spend.

oh, that's right, that was a leftover memory from earlier versions.

at any rate, addressing the op, a city does not necessarily need all improvements the moment those improvements become available; depending on one's style of play and other things, some improvements may not even need to be built at all. part of the balance of civ is knowing what to build and when. <-----ok, so i have a flair for the obvious.

 

[you2]

One question (well another question): Do you ever want to open borders? I almost always say no to lock opposition out while I grab land. Why would you want to say yes ?

 

[photi]

Originally posted by: you2
One question (well another question): Do you ever want to open borders? I almost always say no to lock opposition out while I grab land. Why would you want to say yes ?

sometimes you want to say yes to open borders to avoid war...if an AI civ is locked in, if he can't get open borders he will eventually declare war. actually, if he is really locked in, he's gonna declare war anyway, but open borders can buy time.

as you said, it is also a good strategy in the beginning to not allow it, as that can keep the AI from grabbing land/resources.

saying "no" (for any request) to an AI will also negatively affect your relationship to him (or her....Catherine and Boudica are hot!) throughout the rest of the game, so it helps to choose your friends and enemies from the beginning and appease your "friends" as much as possible. diplomacy is much bigger in this game than it used to be.

also, open borders will help you to explore as well, you need to come into contact with as many other civs as you can in the early game (by the late game, you will have met everyone), the more civs you know, the more trading opportunities you have. also, knowing the layout of the land will make you aware of where all the resources are. if you don't have coal, you will need it eventually, so it is best to know where and from whom you can get (take) it. open borders facilitates that knowledge.

 

[daishi5]

Originally posted by: photi

Originally posted by: you2
One question (well another question): Do you ever want to open borders? I almost always say no to lock opposition out while I grab land. Why would you want to say yes ?

sometimes you want to say yes to open borders to avoid war...if an AI civ is locked in, if he can't get open borders he will eventually declare war. actually, if he is really locked in, he's gonna declare war anyway, but open borders can buy time.

as you said, it is also a good strategy in the beginning to not allow it, as that can keep the AI from grabbing land/resources.

saying "no" (for any request) to an AI will also negatively affect your relationship to him (or her....Catherine and Boudica are hot!) throughout the rest of the game, so it helps to choose your friends and enemies from the beginning and appease your "friends" as much as possible. diplomacy is much bigger in this game than it used to be.

also, open borders will help you to explore as well, you need to come into contact with as many other civs as you can in the early game (by the late game, you will have met everyone), the more civs you know, the more trading opportunities you have. also, knowing the layout of the land will make you aware of where all the resources are. if you don't have coal, you will need it eventually, so it is best to know where and from whom you can get (take) it. open borders facilitates that knowledge.

Open borders is good and bad, it makes the person with the open borders agreement like you more, but people who hate that person can hate you as well.

It is usually best to choose 1-3 people as "friends" suck up to them, and everyone else gets axemen. Thats very generic, but in Civ, you cannot befriend everyone, if you try to be neutral no one will help you when you get in a war. I don't think refusing an open borders request hurts you though, somethings you can say no to with no penalty.

I know you are penalized for refusing demands (they get mad if you won't give them something for free, but if they offer to pay they don't care if you say no), refusing to help them in a war, refusing to cut off relations with another civ, declaring war on them, declaring war on their friends, not following the same relations, and petting the wrong color cat.

Also, the OP really should spend some time posting on civfanatics, this game is very very complex, and some things are very unclear.