Tips on becoming a better Civilization Player?

[Starwulf]

So, I've recently started playing Civ IV a bit more(I've had it and 3(bought at same time) for roughly 2 years, but never played much), and I find that the little bit of Knowledge I retained from having played CIV 1 and 2 when I was like 14 or 15 isn't really helping me much. I'm finally starting to understand the various civics and what not, and I'm getting a bit better(finished 3rd on Noble on the largest map size, and even whupped Tokyo and Persia when they decides to beat on me) but I know there has got to be a lot of room for improvement(obviously). There are a lot of different things I don't know, or don't really understand enough to manipulate, like when I should up my culture slider, where I should set my research slider at, what order I should build buildings in, what techs I should aim for quickly, and which are less important, and most of all: What in the hell is this "add a civ, add an engineer, add a priest, add a whatever" function in the city screen? What purpose does it hold?

In the end, this could perhaps become "The" actual Civ Thread(as I don't think I saw one, though I might just be blind as a bat as usual, I never discount that possibility), which would be nice.

[Teutonic Knight]

I second this thread's proposal, as me wanting to get better at Civ IV is the only thing stopping me from getting Civ V.

One problem I've always had with C iv IV is finding a balance between building up forces, researching, and expanding. What to do before the other, and under what circumstances.

[Reinboom]

Oh, that's a lot of questions...

Note: I'll be commenting on Civ IV specifically. There are a LOT of changes between every Civ number, so many might not apply to others.

Anyways, in Civ IV...

First, an initial global statement:
It's not so much important to know when something should be placed, it would be not very useful information to tell you this. There isn't really any single event that usually defines when something "must happen".
Instead, you should focus on what those things ultimately do and if you want to focus them or not.

Basic Mechanics:
Gold
Gold is only a resource instead of a means in most situations. It should nearly never be a focus. Having your sliders set so you get +1 or +2 gold per turn is pretty standard play.
The mechanics that require gold is maintenance from number of cities (this caps at ~40 cities) and then maintenance for distance from capital.
In the early game, number of cities will have a much larger impact on total maintenance as you generally can't get far away from the capital. Gold is the main limiting factor to trying to sprawl out your empire.

Other resources that require gold:
Unit upgrading. This is a handy tool for keeping your relative power level to other empires correct.
Unit upkeep. The more units you have, the higher this cost is.
Civic upkeep. Certain civics are more expensive than others. This is based on size of your civ.

Standard ways of obtaining gold:
Changing sliders/more commerce resources.
Killing your own units.
Capturing cities.
Huts.
Religions.
Selling Techs (see science).
Contact with other civs (this increases trade as long as you can establish a trade route with them).

See "City Building" for more.

Science
In many cases, this is your most powerful resource. This gets you everything important in the game in some manner.
Once you can trade both gold and technology, this can even be your gold resource.
I'll speak more on techs...

The most important early game techs are as follow (in no particular order):
Masonry. Stone, Marble, and The Pyramids are all incredibly powerful early game. The Pyramids is actually incredibly powerful throughout MOST of the game even. (Overpowered Wonder, right there. See "Wonders")
Bronze Working. Chop Rushing (chopping forests to speed up production. See "Wonders") is incredibly powerful, especially before Beyond the Sword. (Beyond the Sword nerfed it slightly). Bronze Working enables that. It ALSO gives great military units and reveals copper (see "Resources").
Monarchy. This is entirely because Despotism is just that bad and Monarchy is the easiest way to get off of it.

Depending on how you wish to go about the game, many other techs may come of increased or lowered importance. For example, religious victory is your goal? Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.

Throughout later parts of the game, adapt your focus to your situation. Avoid dead end techs if you don't need them right then (for example, Elephant Riding is pretty useless unless you plan to do some early conquering). Avoid these techs entirely. You will be able to trade for them later.

By adaptation, look at what you are lacking. If you are being attacked, rush for a tech with good defensive units to update your line. If you plan to attack, rush for the next good offensive unit tech. If you are in peace and strong stability, focus on getting wonders.
Also, ALWAYS run for techs that give free great people. Great persons are ridiculous in all versions of the game. Especially with certain civics.

Finally, that gold reference from above.

Science CAN become a full replacement to gold. When you advance rapidly enough and leave others behind, try to sell your techs to non aggressive civilizations with low scores. They won't hurt you anyways and instead it's just like free money. Try to sell the same technology as often as you can in a single turn (avoid selling different techs to different civs, they'll just trade with each other then).

Culture
Culture is sort of a backseat, "never focus me" slider. It's NOT good for even doing its own job at achieving cultural victories.
Instead... I'll just explain what culture actually does.

Each city you have produces an amount of culture. This is through various buildings and great people in most cases. This culture is added to a stored location you can find in the bottom left of the city screen.

When the culture reaches each culture level, that city borders expand. The power of this is for obtaining more resources or pushing out other civs. When your borders expand on top of other civs, each city constantly adds culture to those squares and you can "push" out other civs. Even take their cities.

So, culture is generally best used to:
Grab nearby resources that are /just/ outside of your reach.
Push on enemy culture borders (and take their cities with very cultural civs).

Also, in many cases - especially right after capturing some strong city locations - you may wish to up your culture for a little bit in order to make sure that city can access the resources around it.

Throughout most of the game though, this should usually be on 0% as a slider.


City Building
City building and the locations of your cities is VERY VERY important.
In Civ 4 especially, access to specific resources is of the utmost importance.

When building a city, keep the following in mind:
Can I afford it? A decent rule of thumb is if your sliders are at 80% Science/20% Gold and you are still making a profit, then yes. Otherwise no. No you can't. Of course, in some situations, that might not matter because...
Are the resources around it plentiful and/or powerful? Resources have massive impacts on civilizations. Many mid and late game resources can even make or break your civ entirely. Plan to take many of these and carefully.
Is this easy enough to hold? Avoid building cities on your enemies' borders. They will almost always try to take these and constantly harass you. And it will have cultural problems. (Special note: Culture bombing....)
Can I use this city to culture bomb? This is a special strategy with Great Artists. Since culture lets you take nearby cities with diplomatic issues, in many cases it's actually a powerful strategy to drop a city near other powerful city locations of your opponents, and then unleash 3 or 4 great artists to make their "masterpieces". This can let you steal cities easily.

Also, make sure your cities are always connected to your capital. This is for resource sharing.




Wonders and Great People
[b]Other Strategies[b]

I'll work on these sections later. Sorry. Tired.

Hope this helps so far. Though, do look back later.

[tyckspoon]

Notes from personal experience (mind, I don't claim to be great at this game:)

Build more cities. I prefer quality over quantity in my city placements, and you certainly don't have to do like the computer and drop a city every 3 squares, but you do need a strong and reasonably numerous core grouping to compete with the computer's spam- 8-10 cities in decent locations should do (you want at least 7 regardless, because that's how many you need to build certain wonders that require 7 or more base buildings in your civilization.) The other important reason for this is to keep your nearest neighbor civs from over-expanding- if your map gives you a terrain chokepoint between you and a neighbor, drop a city in there even if the resources in that spot aren't great. This helps keep your neighbors smaller and manageable for when you eventually overrun them and swallow them.

Build more military. I tend to over-focus on development of my cities, and then one of two things happens: Barbarians start popping beyond my ability to patrol for them, or a neighboring civ with a war-like disposition decides I look weak and starts swarming over my borders (I usually have good enough production to have units out in 3ish turns by that point, but it's not a lot of help when your border cities are overrun in 2.) Make sure you have strong garrisons and enough spare units to keep an eye on your borders, and remember to update your troops from time to time- doing it with cash is great if you have it, but if not.. well, if you've managed to techrush up to macemen and you've still got Warriors watching your cities, it's probably time to put aside the civic development for a bit and rebuild your army.

[Winthur]

Well, Eldariel and I are setting this succession game (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=210784) up and it should be a worthwhile read when it starts because we will work our minds off to figure out how to eke out an Immortal win.

[bebosteveo]

Generally, your strategy will depend on your situation, unlike other games that have a set build order. Calendar is useless if you don't have any corresponding resources nearby, there's no need to rush military if you're alone on an island, etc. The difference between a new and an experienced player is that the former reacts to bad events, while the later pro-acts. Not to mention that on all but the highest difficulties everyone has their own quirks and preferences on how to do things. But here are some things to get you off the ground. (note, not everything is applicable at high difficulty levels)

Science is your spouse and the relationship is extremely monogamous. Out-teching the opposition is the first step to victory and anything that detracts from that puts you at a disadvantage in the long run. If it drops below 60%, cut back on expansion and/or military units.

If possible, settle in positions that will net you multiple resources. It might not be the most efficient land distribution, but the bonuses they provide will make the city much more useful. At the very least, make sure that the city has a source of food nearby (either in resources or fresh water) so it can grow to more than 2 pop.

Learn to use slavery. Its an indispensable boost to production early on and the only cost is unproductive citizens. Its a win-win and extremely powerful. I'd go so far as to stick with it until you're forced to switch to universal suffrage, but that's just me.

Don't build massive garrisons, they won't event slow down a surprise invasion. Every city should have 1 basic unit to prevent the unhappiness penalty, but no more. Instead, build a few units and maneuver them around to where the threat is/could be (such as an aggressive civ's borders).

Know your civ. Each one has unique traits, units, and buildings that serve as the core of your strategy. Know what they do and how to use them.

Develop the land. Improvements make better tiles which make better cities which makes a better civ. Also cottages (which you should have quite a few of) take a long time to develop, so building them early is a good idea. I find that making 1 worker to accompany every settler works well.

If you can, grab a religion. It helps increase happiness which increases your population and the number of tiles each city can work. It also lets you spread that religion to other civs to get a relationship boost.

Beyond that, its finding what works for you and the situation you're in. I play as Ethiopia on Emperor and my strategy generally consists of building libraries (with slavery) to boost my early research to code of laws (for the courthouses/reduced maintenance costs) then peacefully expanding while I rush up to gunpowder and steamroll neighboring axmen with muskets.

Edit: Oh, and if people start going on about running specialists, popping great people and lightbulbing up through liberalism, tell them that they are horrible teachers and need to learn how to have fun.

[Winthur]

Science is your spouse and the relationship is extremely monogamous. Out-teching the opposition is the first step to victory and anything that detracts from that puts you at a disadvantage in the long run. If it drops below 60%, cut back on expansion and/or military units.

This is a decent rule for starters, but at least I find myself adopting the mindset of throwing my empire into a financial ruin and rising it up from the ashes. It's not uncommon to be running at a deficit on 0% science if the deficit is caused by a long-term investation such as a bunch of quickly-settled cities with blooming cottages or by claiming lucrative settlements from the enemy. Note that wars tend to ruin your economy, not only because of the cost of the units you have on the enemy border, but also because of things like war weariness.
Usually, when I play, I expand my empire, claiming lots of good land, teching very slowly and being beat by the AIs, only holding to some specific, tried&true tech paths (rush to Liberalism, for example) and trading techs, as my cottages flourish and I'm no longer at 0% science.


If possible, settle in positions that will net you multiple resources. It might not be the most efficient land distribution, but the bonuses they provide will make the city much more useful. At the very least, make sure that the city has a source of food nearby (either in resources or fresh water) so it can grow to more than 2 pop.

But always make sure that the city has food to support itself. Food resources are the best resources. Unless you want the city to be a filler that will hog resources and build some basic units like workers, staying at small size for most of the game, you really should make sure that it has enough food resources to support itself. Even if it has to share food resources with other cities. Growth is power in this game.


Learn to use slavery. Its an indispensable boost to production early on and the only cost is unproductive citizens. Its a win-win and extremely powerful. I'd go so far as to stick with it until you're forced to switch to universal suffrage, but that's just me.

Basically there are two mindsets. Slavery allows you to whip a whole bunch of buildings and units from your cities by using food (since you get 30 hammers for one population point, and those grow very quickly with lots of food and granaries, it's easy to sacrifice pop points for buildings like Libraries, but wonder-building cities will need some sustained production from mines). Multiplayer CIV4 is basically balanced around Slavery.

Or you can use Caste System. It's much tougher to use, but with specific playstyles and leader traits (Philosophical) it is a strong option, just way more micro-intensive than just whipping out buildings, and of course using Caste makes your overall expansion slower. With BtS, it also bolsters your Workshops considerably. State Property/Caste System allows for some very interesting Industrial era strategies, including conquest by swarming your enemies with Cavalry.

Serfdom is pretty much never worth it barring games that start in the era that has Serfdom unlocked from the start, giving you some headstart for your workers. So, in 99% of your games, you will never use Serfdom.

Emancipation is a civic worth rushing for cottage-heavy empires. Otherwise most civs will use Emancipation to mitigate the happiness penalty.

But yeah, I agree - Slavery is really strong and definitely worth abusing.


Don't build massive garrisons, they won't event slow down a surprise invasion. Every city should have 1 basic unit to prevent the unhappiness penalty, but no more. Instead, build a few units and maneuver them around to where the threat is/could be (such as an aggressive civ's borders).

Units do hinder your tech and infrastructure and having a massive garrison "just for defense" sets you behind. Although on all difficulty levels staying at #1 in power grants you safety from the AIs (and is encouraged on the levels until Noble at least), remember that amassing units "just for defense" is a bad idea and you should play aggressive if you have a huge stack of units. If you just don't want to die to superior AIs, kiss up to them. No Civs ever declare war at Friendly (although Catherine can be bribed to declare war on you at Friendly).


Know your civ. Each one has unique traits, units, and buildings that serve as the core of your strategy. Know what they do and how to use them.
Protective blows, by the way, barring some really kinky strategies.


Develop the land. Improvements make better tiles which make better cities which makes a better civ. Also cottages (which you should have quite a few of) take a long time to develop, so building them early is a good idea. I find that making 1 worker to accompany every settler works well.

Agreed, you should never have any tiles left undeveloped, ever. A worker/settler pair is just fine, although it's better to have more workers than cities, in about 1,5:1 ratio or so.


If you can, grab a religion. It helps increase happiness which increases your population and the number of tiles each city can work. It also lets you spread that religion to other civs to get a relationship boost.

But don't necessarily found your own religion. While it's a fun strategy to make a huge gold-generating shrine in one of your mother cities, it also sets you up behind in growth and isn't likely to happen unless you start the game with Mysticism (civs ike Aztec, India or Inca do). I find that just adopting an AI religion is just dandy, and you can invade them later for their shrine. :3

(Assuming they don't build the retarded Apostolic Palace which makes me cringe whenever I see it built)


Edit: Oh, and if people start going on about running specialists, popping great people and lightbulbing up through liberalism, tell them that they are horrible teachers and need to learn how to have fun.

What? :smallconfused:

[tyckspoon]

Units do hinder your tech and infrastructure and having a massive garrison "just for defense" sets you behind. Although on all difficulty levels staying at #1 in power grants you safety from the AIs (and is encouraged on the levels until Noble at least), remember that amassing units "just for defense" is a bad idea and you should play aggressive if you have a huge stack of units. If you just don't want to die to superior AIs, kiss up to them. No Civs ever declare war at Friendly (although Catherine can be bribed to declare war on you at Friendly).


Define 'massive'. I usually go for about 3 units to a city, plus some roamers, and it seems to be enough to keep most AI civs looking at other targets, especially if I have tech superiority so that my garrisons are better than their armies. Never had any trouble supporting that amount, and it's still much smaller than the swarms the AIs always generate.

[Winthur]

Define 'massive'. I usually go for about 3 units to a city, plus some roamers, and it seems to be enough to keep most AI civs looking at other targets, especially if I have tech superiority so that my garrisons are better than their armies. Never had any trouble supporting that amount, and it's still much smaller than the swarms the AIs always generate.

I usually read the powergraph and the relations and upon that I build a stack of doom to invade whoever neighbor might be a trouble if I don't shut him up.

I don't tend to amass an army if I don't need to. That usually means I will keep my cities at skeleton defense and surround myself with friends, or eliminate an enemy quickly.

[factotum]

The one piece of advice I always follow is to carefully watch the size of your cities. If they get too big, they'll start being discontent or diseased, either or both of which reduce their efficiency! Generally, I turn on "restrict growth" when the city is as big as it can get without suffering either condition, and keep monitoring the situation to see when I can let the brakes off.

[Starwulf]

The one piece of advice I always follow is to carefully watch the size of your cities. If they get too big, they'll start being discontent or diseased, either or both of which reduce their efficiency! Generally, I turn on "restrict growth" when the city is as big as it can get without suffering either condition, and keep monitoring the situation to see when I can let the brakes off.

By size, you mean population right? Does it particularly matter as long as you have a positive to your happiness and healthiness scores?

so, I've definitely learned one thing from this thread, and that's better micro-management of my workers. I'm getting my arse STOMPED in a game right now, I mean absolutely massacred, but I've also come to realize how big of an advantage you can gain by micro-managing your workers early on, especially when it comes to useful word wonders. Select a big World Wonder(useful one tho) in a city surrounded by forests, and assign one worker per square and start chopping. Almost guarantees you'll get it built before anyone else due to the Hammer gained from the chopping. It also works wonders when you're trying to get certain early buildings off, like monuments and stuff that increase your culture which help expand your borders quicker. If I had done that at the beginning of my current game, I think I'd be at least middle of the pack right now instead of dead last. as it is, I started doing it within the last 100 turns, and I'm starting to actually catch up to the 2nd from the bottom(and he had a 450 point lead on me ><).

Also: don't squander all your money on upgrading units early on when it stops you from using that gold to keep science production at least at 80% >< That was a huge mess-up on my part.

[Suedars]

Some random pointers:

Specialize your cities. Actively look to what each city will be doing when you're dotmapping out your region. Build buildings accordingly. Production cities don't need Libraries, and Great People Farms don't need Barracks.

Don't obsess over Wonders. A lot of newer players tend to build too many Wonders without taking into account how expensive they can be. Choose 1-2 Wonders that suit your strategy (and that you hopefully have the bonus resource for), and aim for those. Also be weary of pre-Classical wonders. They can really stunt your expansion/early aggression. The best Ancient Wonder in the game is the following:

Big Stack of Axemen
350 Hammers
When Big Stack of Axemen is completed, defeat a neighboring Civilization. Gain 2 of their cities.

Tech broker aggressively. You should be checking the foreign advisor every few turns to see where your opponents are techwise. Choose techs they don't have, and sell them off to as many civilizations as possible the turn you complete them (obvious exceptions are key military techs you want to leverage and techs for Wonders you want). By doing this you can net 4 techs and a stack of gold for every tech you do research.

[factotum]

By size, you mean population right? Does it particularly matter as long as you have a positive to your happiness and healthiness scores?

Not sure what you mean--"positive" on happiness and healthiness means the same as I said, doesn't it (e.g. you have more happy than unhappy people, and more health than "unhealth")? If you have too many citizens for your happiness level then the excess ones don't work the fields and can't be used as specialists, so they're just a drain on resources, not to mention that you'll start being unable to build Settlers if you get too many unhappy people in your cities (I think it's even possible to get rebels popping up if it gets really bad). An unhealthy city requires more food and can't get a "We love the king!" celebration. Neither of these are good for the growth of your civilisation as a whole!

[ObadiahtheSlim]

If you don't mind having to play a bit of catchup, rushing can net you some very nice land to slingshot yourself into first place. Axe rushes can work well. Particularly if you have a good UU axe or the aggressive trait.

If axe rushes aren't feasible you can beeline construction and then elephant rush. 8 strength elephants + catapults are very strong when their only hard counter is 4 strength spears. Plus stables and barracks gives you two promotions right out the gate even if you aren't charismatic.

Sure your economy will go into the pits, but you will have captured a capital site or two. Build libraries (for scientist specialists) and courthouses to reduce maintenance costs and then before long you'll be out teching everyone.

Plus if your neighbor was a wonder whore, you'll have just grabbed all those nice wonders that you had to pass on. Last game got me the Great Wall, Temple of Artemis, Stonehenge, and the Buddhist holy city pretty early on. Plus the AI used their great spy to build me a Scotland yard. A shame pyramids and hanging gardens were on a different continent.

[bothi73]

Wait... Is this civilization revolution or somthing else? I thought 4 is revolution?

[Winthur]

Nope, Civ4 is Civ4.

Civilization Revolution is a console exclusive incarnation which is more similar to 2-3 in mechanics than to 4.

[bothi73]

Nope, Civ4 is Civ4.

Civilization Revolution is a console exclusive incarnation which is more similar to 2-3 in mechanics than to 4.

Oh, ok. Only have revolution, and I'm rather beast at it. But as that is irrelivant to this thread,


Bothi Out.