I am still trying to wrap my head around the game, and my biggest problems are at the beginning, right after settling my first city.
What is the first thing I should build? Warrior, Worker or Settler?
Should I research Bronze Working and etc at the start? I have no idea if those resources would pop up.
Is there any way to claim the resources which I built my city on?
With Beyond the Sword, I sometimes have difficulty to get the influence border of a city to grow. Does terrain limits the border?
I am still at the ahem Settler difficulty. Mainly the problems I have to deal with are when to build a new city (do I mindlessly just whack ‘Next Turn’ for 15 over turns to wait for my Settler while there is no growth) and later, getting gold.
you should build a worker asap, and research hunting so you can build a scout. send your warrior out to explore, you should find a worker or scout fairly soon. once the worker is built, either build a scout if you dont have one, or switch back to building a settler. and yes, just keep clicking next turn for a while.
btw, the resources you built the city on are automatically used
I disagree: it’s important to remember that building either workers or settlers will halt your population growth until they’re complete. If you build a worker right from the get-go, your population will be stuck at 1 for 10-15 turns, which will cripple your first research item. I build a warrior right away, use my existing warrior to expore the periphery of my territory, and within a couple of turns when my second warrior is complete my population is already up to 3. Then I build a worker and probably a settler too.
Playing against the AIs, I can count on there being no threat from anything except animals for the first 20 turns or so, and so I try to take advantage of that time to ramp up my city’s productivity and found a second city. I play at the Prince level, BTW.
What is the first thing I should build? Warrior, Worker or Settler?
It depends on your starting position but generally it’s best to build a warrior first to let the city grow a bit. Also, if you play a civ that starts with fishing and there is a food resource in the water by your city, build a fishing boat first.
Should I research Bronze Working and etc at the start? I have no idea if those resources would pop up.
It’s good to get bronze working (BW) early so you can switch to slavery (and see where the bronze is for your second city). If you research BW while letting the city grow by building warriors (who will be useful for exploration and defence) then you can switch to slavery when available and then whip out a worker quickly using slavery.
Is there any way to claim the resources which I built my city on?
You’ll get the resource automatically when you have the required tech. It’s best not to build on the resources as you don’t get the full tile benefit. The only time it’s worth building on top of is if it’s the only supply of a strategic resource (iron, copper, horses or oil), is on a border and you’re worried about your neighbouring enemies pillaging it.
With Beyond the Sword, I sometimes have difficulty to get the influence border of a city to grow. Does terrain limits the border?
Terrain doesn’t affect the cultural border (only exception is where you can only expand out by two tiles into ocean).
Your cultural expansion will be slowed (or even stopped or reversed depending on which city has the greater culture) where it clashes with a rival culture but terrain does not have an effect.
By looking at the tile food content around your city you’ll probably see what is the optimal size to grow the worker and settler. This might be one if you have only one resource and mountain and sea around but it could also be 3-4 if you have floodplane, fish, cow and grain. In other words, if your first city looks like a good big city, let it grow first. If it looks bad, go for the quick expansion. Also, I’ve had a worker built before I had the technology to work on anything, so make sure there’s something to improve.
I’d start with warrior to let the city grow, but it doesn’t need to get complete before you start the worker. CivIV will save your work on warrior until the worker gets ready, unlike earlier versions.
If you know about the “fat cross,” I like to have my first two cities with their fat crosses immediately adjacent but not overlapping. If the first city is on a river, I definitely want to put the second city upstream from it so that they’re immediately connected.
No- build wherever the computer places the settler. Normally it has at least one spiky food source.
What level are you playing? If it is noble, I have some great instructions but it does take a lot of reading.
Basically, specialise your cities. Have about 4 or 5 producing commerce, and for every one of those have a specialist military producer. Produce units- nothing else.
And also have a Great Person producing city- produce nothing but great people. It will need at least three food sources.
Without getting too deep- look at the Civs as well. Organised religion allows you to produce buildings 25% quicker. Monarchy allows a military unit to produce happiness- this is important. The caste system allows unlimited great people in scientists etc.
Sorry- just saw you were at settler level. The above tactics still apply.
CivIV puts the settler automatically to a good spot. It has a tendency to not to put it on shore if the tiles inland are better, which I don’t like. There are other cases when I have slightly different preferences. So I move it sometimes one tile, even two. But unlike in the earlier Civs, wandering around for years is not a good idea.
What technology your civilization has from the start affects things. Do you have farming, mining, fishing or hunting? Particularly the money from sea tiles affects how fast you can gain new technology. This affects your strategy regarding unit building. If I’m spanish I always get the buddhism first, having a religion is important.
But maybe this is just confusing a beginner. In fact, in this sort of games the best part is when you start to explore the game and suck at it. So I personally don’t ask for advise but just enjoy the new unexpected adventures that that suckitude offers. The more you learn the more it becomes like chess (and I like chess too).
My Steam version of Civ4 shows 117 hours played. Prior to that, my ‘demo’ copy of Civ4 had probably around 300 hours at the minimum. The original Civ1 for SNES I probably clocked another 500 hours at least.
And I still don’t play above Prince. So… don’t fret if you are bad at it. It’s one of those games where the journey is the point, not the ending.
I second the recommendation of Sisiutils strategy tips for beginners from the civfanatics forums. Good information in there.
Also, the civfanatic forums in general. There are a bunch of threads there where people post their game online in pretty detailed fashion. I, for one, have a hard time following that sort of thread - but there are also succession games you can get into. Succession games start with an original save game everyone has access to. One person takes 10-20 turns (depending on speed), posting what happened along the way, and then posting the save from the end of their turn set. Then the next person picks up the save and continues on.
The real nice thing about succession games is that the amount of data to process in your mind in terms of game play decisions is small enough to manage because each turn set is intentionally small. Also, if you make a mistake strategy-wise - someone can fix and rectify it before it gets too far. You get to see the mistake that was made, and the way to fix it! Finally, you get to be exposed to different ways of doing things. You end up saying ‘ah ha! I never knew that was possible’ or ‘I didn’t know that would happen like that’.
Just bought this game myself this past weekend. The tutorial kept freezing on like the 3rd step so I’ve been figuring it out cold. Still not quite sure how much super-micromanaging I need to be doing. Will setting my units on automatic tasks(explore, build improvements, etc.) set them up for a while, or should I be checking in on them every turn? Sometimes it seems like they’re all just standing around.
One point about building Workers (and Settlers): On difficulty levels lower than Noble (and this includes Settler level), huts can contain Worker and Settler units. A good strategy is to build several Warriors (or, if you can, Scouts) and pop lots of huts. With luck, you’ll get some Workers and Settlers w/o having to build them. Of course this won’t work if you advance to playing at higher levels.
I think I’m gonna splurge on teh expansions, if I can find them seperately anymore. I have my copy of Civ 4 (bought when the game was out for 2 weeks) and everything I read says BTS makes it a whole other game…
Regarding the tutorial freezing: Make sure that you’ve applied the latest patch to whatever version of Civ 4 that you have. The patches may be found here. I don’t know if a patch will fix your problem, but it probably won’t hurt. Civ 4 comes with a way to patch directly from within the game, but many players find that method to be unreliable. It’s preferable to download the patch and then run it from your computer.