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I recently picked up Civ IV BTS and god....... to compound the new learning curve I had from learning to play Civ IV, BTS changed the things again with episonage.

So, I'm still stuck in adapting gameplay from Civ II and Civ III to match up with the massive changes in Civ IV, and the addition of a new episonage counter and requirements for defence/attacks, quests and etc...... its a pretty large leap. I picked up some of the new lore, such as how cities should be specialised now, the idea of cottage cities, military cities, wonders aren't everything(! !?!?)..... And I think I restarted at least 6 games so far after my civilisation found itself in a barely tenable position.

So, as background fluff, I'm usually a turtler and win prevous civ games through tech advantages, developing a small advanced military against my opponents. Tank rushes, artillery bombardment and aerial attacks against their armies.

Here's the two questions I would love people to answer.
1. How do you gear up industrial production easily? I usually find that other than my capital city and perhaps, one military city, I have no other cities capable of reaching a decent industrial output. Granted, I haven't reached the real industrial age such as powerplants and the like, but I would had expected reaching access to coal, forges and etc would had made it easy for me to build up industrial production. It wasn't....... the difficulty of developing and levelling up semi-mature cities in Mediveal cities felt like when I was creating new cities in Industrial age for the older civ games.

To make things worse, the game really appears to favour specialisation, to the extent that smaller general cities can't build up an army and you either need to specialise cities near hills/rivers in production or start levelling up cities in good terrain to high population, with the attendant problems of riots/health/...... not to mention I find it extremely difficult to level up cities pops outside of cities located near two food resources.

2. How do you fight and win wars? Civ IV is the only game where I don't find myself with an early tech advantage other than a rapidly transient period between Macemen/Crossbows and the opponents are having archers. Riflemen/Musketmen don't seem to offer the same dramatic tech change, and due to my industrial weakness, I can't really generate a large army to win opponents. The early network of religions and diplomatic tensions also means that my "defensive" army is usually engaged in wars.... and once I get stuck in a war, my economic/tech advantages usually get attrited away rapidly.

And while the difficulties of capturing a city, the need for multiple unit types and etc are all welcome and extremely fun, well....... i still trying to learn how to build up an army from scratch that could actually do that. From what I seen online, its also beneficial to be aggressive in the game, capturing enemy cities. So, how do you do that easily? so far, penetrating into the heartland of an enemy civilisation, I find my army stacks falling to their units and degrading to the point of being useless. Reinforcements are then too far away to easily reach, and as said, my industrial production is usually too low to really compete.

The biggest thing is that they have re-inforced the need to defend your chokepoints. Personally I'm a turtler as well and what I've noticed is that whereas befroe I would never situate a city on a hill I've come to do so specifically to create a huge roadblock for attacking opponents. With a solid cultural boost (and I live to get Stonehenge) plus City Defense I can often toss just a handful of units in the city and it will alwayscontain an attack from that direciotn until I have time to shift resources from elsewhere.

With espionage I mostly use it in the passive sense putting just enough in that a) my opponents can't run all that many missions against me due to cost and b) I can see what tech they are working on. After that I huddle until I can get to corporations and then I found mining Inc and proceed to put a chapter in any city that needs a production boost. With decent trade going on I can usually add ten to twenty hammers per turn to a small or mid-size city which helps it really crank things up. This especially goes for my spaceship producers, I'll take the money hit to get an extra few turns knocked off finishing the ship and launching. In the meantime trade tech for security and I always play "No Tech Brokering" in order to increase the value of my services to other nations.

For me, I cheat. I use the worldbuilder to give me cash and then I slowly build cities until I enounter the boundaries of the other empires then I hunker down and build\research until I am ready for world domination.

The Civ Fanatics site and forums are a great place to pick up tips on how to play. I have found that following the succession games is also good for seeing how other people play the game and might actually change the way you play the game (as it did for me).

I use espionage the same way CmdrWilkens does and wouldnt recommend doing different until you really have a good grasp of the game.

As for your production problems you need to really plan your city placement. Getting a good mix of food to grow and hills/forests to work is critical to a good production city. The biggest hurdle is in placing cities that overlap without hurting either one in the long run.

I also cant recommend running the 'Representation' civic enough, the +3 science for each specialist is a great boost and should help with keeping up or ahead in research.
For stack composition, that all depends on the era in which you are fighting, but the basics for early war should be a two to one of seige to regular units and once you reach modern you can usually drop to a one to one or less with help from air units. It also pays to have a few dedicated stack defenders who never attack to help keep the stack safe in transit to the next target. The rest is just a numbers game of taking different promotions to theme units for city attack, defense and so on.

The only other thing I can recommend is playing at the slower speeds such as epic and marathon, I just seem to have an easier time of it, plus its fun waging medievil wars for 100 turns .
If you want me to go more in depth or have no idea what im saying just give me a yell.

lol. I'm running the game at slower speeds, as the normal paced games simply evolve too fast for me. And as you said, its fun to actually be at mediveal age for yonks as opposed to Civ II where one never builds muskets and evolves directly to riflemen/tanks.....

Out of curiousity, which wonders would you guys recommend for trade/tech boost?

Remember, to play properly you have to totally ignore all the fluff that drew you to the game and play the spreadsheet underneath.

THIS IS FUN.

PainRack wrote:Out of curiousity, which wonders would you guys recommend for trade/tech boost?

I'm a big fan of University of Sankore...the +2 for each State Religion Building is HUGE. Considering that Monastaries already give you +10% then add an extra 2 beakers its a really nice boost. Hell it actually forces me to delay "Scientific Method" so I can get the boost for longer. Also Sistine Chapel is great to help push the defensive cultural bubble.

Other wonders I always try to build:
Great Wall: I usually play on ragin barbarians so if I can get this up then I'm free to expand without worry while my opponents have to do so in a much more deliberate manner
Pyramids: Lets me get to Representation usually around 2000BC
Spiral Minaret: The +1 gold from state religion buildings is a damn nice boost, if you found a religion and have the temple as well then that's just a huge chunk of cash without having to devote a percentage of your trade revenue.
Eiffel Tower: Stonehenge of the modern world
Three Gorges Dam: You need power and getting it continent wide saves a crapload of time building them in each city.

Wonders will really depend on your leader and what you are aiming for. I usually play as a creative leader so have no real use for stonehenge but the boost it gives to early border pops is very helpful to claim land if you lack the creative trait.

I am a big fan of the pyramids as they can gain you the representation civic far earlier then normal but you have to be careful not to tank your expansion early on as it is a resouce heavy build.

The colossus and Great Lighthouse are a must on water heavy maps as they will provide a great income boost.

The Great Wall is also a good choice if you find you have trouble keeping the barbarians in check and it is amusing to have an uprising that can only attack the other civs.

The Oracle can also provide you with a good tech boost, made even easier if yuo have marble access. Building the wonder to one turn complete and delaying while teching up can be good but you have to always be careful of someone else building it.

The Apostolic Palace and UN are obvious choices if you are going for a diplomatic victory but less important except for denial if you are chasing another win.

Most of the other wonders should be obvious in use and building as many as possible if you are going for a culture win is recommended. The main thing as always is to plan ahead and not chase every shiny new wonder that pops up, unless you want some easy cash as a partial build of a wonder can net you a lot of money and sometimes it pays to throw a few turns in a wonder you are never going to complete just for the cash payoff once someone else builds it.

Delta_Squad wrote: Most of the other wonders should be obvious in use and building as many as possible if you are going for a culture win is recommended. The main thing as always is to plan ahead and not chase every shiny new wonder that pops up, unless you want some easy cash as a partial build of a wonder can net you a lot of money and sometimes it pays to throw a few turns in a wonder you are never going to complete just for the cash payoff once someone else builds it.

Errrr...... won't that effort be better invested by simply spending production on the wealth tab?

Well, these guys will help:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/

But to summarize some of their tips:

Tech research goes faster the more prerequisites you have and they more civilizations that you know that have it.

Corporations are fun- I think they made them more sane, but you can trash the enemies economies with them if you use them right. And with the more reasonable costs, you can drive your own cities.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5701209

PainRack wrote: Errrr...... won't that effort be better invested by simply spending production on the wealth tab?

The money you get per hammer is actually higher with the wonder payback, and while you shouldnt be doing this all the time I have found it can be a good build in those really crap cities you get that will never be very good and are really just filling space or gaining you a particular resource.

Errr....... can anyone tells me how the free specialist in Mercantilism works?

PainRack wrote:Errr....... can anyone tells me how the free specialist in Mercantilism works?

It's a free specialist. It just sits around and acts like a regular specialist in every way.

Yes, this does, in fact, mean that if you have representation they give +3 science or whatever.

MJ12 Commando wrote:

PainRack wrote:Errr....... can anyone tells me how the free specialist in Mercantilism works?

It's a free specialist. It just sits around and acts like a regular specialist in every way.

Yes, this does, in fact, mean that if you have representation they give +3 science or whatever.

So......... Do you see it or its invisible?

PainRack wrote:

MJ12 Commando wrote:

PainRack wrote:Errr....... can anyone tells me how the free specialist in Mercantilism works?

It's a free specialist. It just sits around and acts like a regular specialist in every way.

Yes, this does, in fact, mean that if you have representation they give +3 science or whatever.

So......... Do you see it or its invisible?

You can see it. If you mouse over the specialist portraits in your city details window then one of them should have "(Free Specialist)" in the little info box.

Ouch. I just realised the routine screencap function the programme has sucks balls........ Anyone has any idea how I can get better screenies?