Metal Reviews

Started playing Civ4 yesterday. Lost twice to some assholes who back stabbed me because I wouldn't give them my technologies for free.

Are there any Civilization experts here who can give me some advice on what to do in the early game? The way I see it is that you need to make a lot of settlements early on so that you have more possible actions per turn, but at the same time you need to build workers and soldiers, so something has to be delayed.

What level do you play at? (this is important to answer properly to your question, you play very differently early on depending on the difficulty level) I used to play at Monarch/Emperor level, so I'm no expert per se but I was good enough. In the early game, you really need to focus on 3 things:

1. Having 1.5 worker per city (which means if you have 4 cities, you must have 6 workers). Improve your tiles, it makes all the difference. Building a worker first is 8 times out of ten the best choice (you just have to make sure it has something to improve when it comes out).

2. Having 6 cities by 1 AD (rule of thumb). It WILL flush your economy down the toilet, but if you beeline Code of Laws (for Courthouses) and Currency, you should be fine. For your economy, building Cottages is the simpler option if you're not comfortable with having specialists in your cities.

3. Securing a strategic ressource such as Copper or Iron, or a least Horses. For defense purposes (Genghis, Shaka and Montezuma, I'm looking at you), or attacking a weak neighbor (Gandhi, I'm also looking at you).

Also, it's fine to give free techs away, especially to militarily powerful civs. The AI loves you for that, and is less likely to attack you. You want to have a couple of buddies in this game. Oh, AVOID converting to a religion, except if it's the dominant religion on your continent/the religion of the guys you want to be buddy with. The religion diplomatic modifier (you see them when you mouse over the leaders) evolves and can be huge.
Another thing, the Slavery civic is VERY powerful. I used to whip my population like crazy in order to have an army of axemen very early and kill a neighbor or two. Whipping your Courthouses is also a very viable option.
Last thing (I could add many more actually, but, you know, information overload), play on your leader traits. If you're financial, build cottages. If you're spiritual, switch your civics as often as needed (and even more).

Feel free to ask any questions, I love this game, even though I haven't played it for two years.

Also, I don't know if you have the "Beyond the Sword expansion pack", but it's a must have.

I play on chieftain difficulty I think, it's the third from the top. Thanks for all the advice, I'm just about to start another game and will try to implement all of that into my gameplay. A few noob questions:

When you get to choose what to build there are always 2 options that are recommended, what makes them recommended? I haven't wrapped my head around how economy and population works, so I usually just go with the recommended things. But I feel like that's the stupid way to go about it.

Another thing that feels kind of stupid is setting all workers to auto. Is it viable to automate the workers if I want to win, or do I have to make all the decisions myself?

- That would be Warlord difficulty, a good one to begin playing this game. "Normal" mode is Noble.

- You can (should) ignore recommended options. The AI doesn't know what your plan is. I try myself to specialize my cities (economic centers, Great People farms, production powerhouses, etc.). It makes no sense to build a market in a production city, or a barracks in a commerce city. The AI doesn't know how to handle those things. Try to have a plan, and stick to it. This is how you get better.

- Same thing with automation, avoid it like the plague Workers, city governors (inside your city screen, near the Whipping button in the bottom)... You should do everything yourself. Automated workers do poor choices, and do not know (again) what your plan is. They would build farms where you need cottages (commerce cities), cottages where you need farms (Great People farms), and mines where not needed. It is tedious to manage an empire on a Huge map, so you may avoid those map sizes for now.

- Another advice: plan you city placements. Explore early your area, and know where there is enough food to grow a beautiful, fat, productive city. My very first city often build a worker first, then two-three warriors (two for exploration, one for defense), then a settler. You may insert a workboat here if you're coastal and have crabs/fish to work).

It's a beautiful game, my favorite ever. So satisfying when you win. Oh and again, Beyond the Sword adds a lot to the gameplay, do you have it? (espionnage, corporations, some wonders, the Apostolic Palace, random events, and many other things)

Good early game strategy: research bronze working, and then go mental on trees to add production points to speed up settlers and city improvements.

I would have said : "research bronze working, switch to slavery and then go mental on your population to speed up settlers and military units (and city improvements)." But yeah, tree chopping is good too.

To Dev: 6th season with Montréal (I figured you could up the difficulty during a game, silly me). All-star diff is wow. Awesomely frustrating? All the neat moves that worked wonders at Pro diff won't work anymore. It's like the AI wants me dead, I love it. I don't win as often, despite having a pretty good team. There are not many goals though (for me and the opponent), perhaps I should tweak the sliders a bit, we'll see.
Anyway, 28 games in, 19-8-1. I'm currently #7, it's very tight. The boss wants 40 wins + Conference final. Err... will see about that, boss. Quick roster (overall rating), the ones you don't know are generated players obviously:

1. T. Hall (93) ; M. Duchene (92) ; J. Skinner (90)

2. M. Pääjärvi (88) ; J. Tavares (92) ; K. Westgarth (83)

3. T. Tatar (85) ; R. Nugent-Hopkins (87) ; N. Jensen (83, high potential)

4. S. Couturier (84) ; A. Dakeev (83, high pot.) ; B. Gionta (81, free agent)

D1. T. Hamonic (91) ; Hedman (95)

D2. J. Cowen (89) ; O. Ekman-Larsson (90)

D3. S. Brookbank (83) ; J. Scott (83)

G. R. Lehner (89) ; P. Leclaire (87)

Highest salary: 4.9M. Have no use for greedy bastards.

Nice. Solid team. Young, just entering their prime, or just about to. I love how quickly you took to this game. My buddy Blake, aka Here for Beer, is a huge hockey fan but can't wrap his head around Be-A-GM fully and he's been playing NHL games since NHL 94. Just makes me laugh. Now you've got me wanting to go play, so I think I shall.

Haha! Getting into it was easy: the game's awesome, hockey's awesome (I'm a newcomer but I watch more hockey games than football games these days..), and this game mode is exactly what I'm looking for when I play sports games. I want to try be a pro and be a legend though... maybe after the end of this season... or the next one. How is it?

Be-A-Pro is cool. But, to be 100% honest I have not actually invested any serious amount of time into it since NHL 09. But, in NHL 09 it was fun. I tried to be a defensive defenseman, but got a little too boring for me. You definitely should try it but go for a sniper winger or playmaking center.

A few more questions about Civ4:

I'm trying to understand how land improvements work (cottages, farms). Do I get, for instance, food from a tile if I don't have anything built on it? Do I have to assign someone to work the tile or does it generate something without a person working on it?

What should I do with my first city? I've been reading up on the different specializations but I'm not sure how I should start out.

I keep hearing specialists being mentioned, what the hell are they, where do I find them, and what do I do with them? When I open up the city screen there are a bunch of icons on the right with plus/minus signs, are these the specialists?

I'm confused, but determined to master this game. Thanks in advance

Normal to be confused when you start playing a Civ game Answers:

- You can see what tiles are "worked" in your city screen. Tiles with a circle (IIRC) are worked. The number of worked tiles depends on the size of your city. Size 1 = 2 worked tiles (the city tile itself, and another). Size 2 = 3 tiles. Etc. You can choose yourself what tiles to work by clicking on them.

- Specialists: yeah, those are the little faces in the bottom right corner. There are different kinds (depending on whether you have Beyond the Sword or not), mouse over them and you'll see what they can produce (some civics and wonders boost them). They notably also produce Great people points, so you want to have at least one city "specialized in specialists". One assigned specialist costs one worked tile. So if you plan on using them in a city, be sure it is a food-heavy city (pigs, rice, farms everywhere on grassland tiles, etc.)
Be aware that playing specialist-economies is a lot of fun, but it's easier to learn how to beat the game with a cottage economy. I recommended you to have only one (max. 2) cities full of specialists (your GP farms), and use cottages for your other commerce cities.

- Your first city (Capital): it depends mostly on the land it has in its radius. Your capital often has a lot of enhanced tiles (food resources, strategic ressources, luxury ressources) or trees to chop. Use that. Here's what I try to to first with a capital:

1. My build queue is Worker - Warrior (exploration) - Warrior (expl) - Warrior (defense) - Settler (remove one warrior if you start with one). I often rush the production of the settler around 2800 BC (slavery), which means I research Bronze Working early as Fridge mentioned (it's often my first or second tech). By 2000BC, you should have a second city. Be aware that the production of workers and settlers is special: it uses hammers + food (the other things only use hammers). So with that build queue (Worker-Warrior-Warrior-Settler), you want to have both in your city. Food tiles + mines on hills are a nice combo early on.
Oh and a quick tip, explore in circles. You want to know what's around your capital to find suitable future city locations. First and foremost. Going in one straight direction is pointless.

2. Then when you have your 2nd city, you can start to specialize your capital. Try to have enough food in it to sustain its growth (a +4 or +5 surplus is a good rule of thumb). If you want to make it a commerce city, plant cottages on grassland. Production city? Mines + farms. GP farm? Farms. You should know that a civic - Bureaucracy - boosts the hammer and commerce output of your capital. Use it when you can.

3. After that, it depends on your plan. Don't neglect your military: the stronger you are, the less other civs are likely to attack you. Except Montezuma, who is a psychopath. Don't neglect libraries to not fall behind in techs... If you want to wage war, bring a lot of suicide-catapults (you'll find this strategy explained on the civfanatics.com forums, but I can explain it to you if you like) along with your melee units...

If you have further questions, fell free to ask! My blabbering is endless when it comes to Civ.

Thanks! That clears things up. I had no idea settlers and workers required both production and food. Time to start my 5th game I think, hopefully I can get my first win.

EDIT: I managed to wipe out the French in less than 20 rounds, so I got off to a great start. I am now at war with Spain and Germany, but I'm in a pretty good lead. I also was the first to circumnavigate the globe, so I am at an advantage because it is an island map. Things are looking good.

Well done, the French are often a PITA (Louis is a backstabber, Napoleon is aggressive, De Gaulle can be everything), better to have them dead. What's your leader?

I play Roman, mostly because I used to play so much Rome Total War, so it feels right. I killed Louis, what a relief.

You guys are making me want to get Civ 4 out myself. Already distracted by Cathedral when I should be writing about Iced Earth.

Which leader? (traits are important) Romans have one of the best unique unit of the game. Praetorians. They're deadly. Whenever I have a Roman next to me, either I play über-nice with him until I have longbows and crossbows, or I rush him just like you rushed the French.

Zad: Sorry man, HE started this.

Pokemon: HeartGold. Yeah go ahead and judge me, im 20 years old and i still have fun playing these games. >:P

A friend of mine just asked me this and I dont really know alot about computers so can anyone here answer this?

The answer is no. His graphic card (Nvidia 8400 GS) is hardly capable of running it at "low" settings, and his CPU is shit. Not a chance, sorry

(source: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... are-guide/)