While I’m not sure if it can completely explain your bad luck, you should read this thread : it explains everything you ever wanted to know about Civ IV combat
Two of the more important points mentioned :
Quick question about culture. How do the borders move when you’re not hitting one of the thresholds?
It seems to me that when a city is at 500 and it’s neighbor is past the 5000 threshold, neither being close to the next jump, those borders shouldn’t move.
All in all, I don’t see a huge benefit to builing up culture once you reach the mid game and borders are established, unless you’re hoping for a culture victory. I understand culture has other effects outside of borders, but are any of them worth dumping research and production into unless that’s the victory condition you’re going for?
This is good advice, I’ve been cavalier about upgrades and elite units in the past and it’s a big reason why my enemies have been so dogged. A short question, how does the game decide who attacks/defends when you attack/defend a square that contains a stack of units?
I have a fundamental problem with this. I just have never been able to feel good about this, doesn’t matter if I’m playing Civ or Madden or whatever. No restarts, no resets, play the hand you’re dealt. Sometimes it’s fun to battle adversity, of course to each his own. Granted, on the harder levels you have to do this to have a prayer.
Well, you’re correct that the main direct benefit of culture (borders and flipping cities) isn’t usually that important by the mid-game. However, I believe that all of the culture buildings give benefits to happiness, which can still be important depending on the situations of the game (some of the early resources that give happiness become obsolete as the game goes on, you might have problems with war weariness, etc.) I also think that it might have some effect on diplomacy, but I’m not sure.
Just think of it as Guns, Germs, and Steel in action 
That was another question of mine. How well does this work? Seems like it would either be really slow (email version) or really annoying because someone would always not be able to log into the game very often.
Que? Civ4 has realtime online multiplayer built in. I’ve never tried it (never played any online live multiplayer of any kind for that matter), and I don’t know how it’s specifically implemented, but it’ll be realtime either P2P or more likely through a dedicated Firaxis server.
To add to that, I’m guessing that since Civ is turn based there’ll either be a “waiting for other players” component or all players will set their orders at the same time and then all player orders will be committed in sequence once submitted.
One thing I’ll be curious to learn is how communication effects multiplayer games. If there’s real-life diplomacy going on (almost like a Diplomacy game) it renders alot of the diplomatic and religious aspects to Civ4 moot.
So then, everyone has to set aside six hours in a row to play?
I don’t believe that you have to play it all in one sitting; I think you can save and start up again where the group left off.
But, then if one person leaves, the game has to pretty much stop (or that person can put their Civ on AI, I assume).
There were big and small Earth Maps that came with Civ3. It still assigned civs randomly with respect to geography. When I played the Persians I started in Australia and when I played the Babylonians I started in Argentina. Don’t expect it to make sense.
I’m picking up some valuable info here. Here is what I’ve picked up:
If you are generating, say, 20 tools per turn, and you only need 10 tools to complete your thing, the other 10 tools are applied to the next thing you choose. Several times already I’ve been able to pop out a settler or warrior in just one turn thanks to over production the previous turn.
The big thing, to me, was that roads are only necessary to connect cities and resources. You don’t need to put a road on every possible square in a city.
Galleys refuse to enter non-coastal squares. In the olden days, you could at least risk a trans-oceanic voyage. I miss that. Galleys can also hold 2 units, but caravels only 1. Transports only carry 4 units, I think.
Dismantling a unit in a city doesn’t give you additional tools to finish a project. In Civ III you could dismantle your archer and help build your library, etc. It doesn’t appear to be the case anymore.
India’s special unit doesn’t appear to ever become obsolete. I’ve just entered the medieval era playing the Indians for the first time. Their unit, the fast worker, completes everything a certain percentage faster. I’m more of a builder than a fighter, so I love the fast infrastructure creation.
None of your units, including missionaries can enter a foreign territory unless you have open borders.
When you establish a peace treaty, the computer moves all units to their respective territories. No more asking Caesar to PLEASE remove his archer from my turf.
Barbarians tend to be tougher. I can think of only one or two times in Civ III were a warrior or archer lost to a similar barbarian. It seems to be happening frequently now. I can’t just send out 1 warrior to clean up the barbarian problem.
I love getting all the government civics early, with pyramids. Is it the Parthenon that greatly increases your output of Great People?
Here’s what I understand about Great People. The scientists, at least, maybe the others, have a special knowledge they can automatically provide. For instance, I created Socrates. The automatic knowledge gain I could get by surrendering him was philosophy. I’ve been choosing this option for them, because I don’t understand the academy option to well yet.
Haven’t really sussed out Great Artists yet. Seems to work as a culture bomb.
Great merchants are my favorite. Pop that sucker on a caravel and take him to the biggest city as far away from you as possible. Establish a trade mission. The two times I’ve done that, I got 1200 and 1500 GP immediately.
Also, the great people can be cashed in for great eras. The eras don’t seem as powerful as they did in Civ III, but you can have as many as you want, depending on your great people output.
With all the additional resources, and their new uses, all the city improvements (Has anyone built a watermill yet?) it is going to take a while to figure this game out.
Also, does anyone know anything about the play by IP address option in multiplayer? As I understand it, the players wouldn’t need to use the gaming website provided. Players would just enter the IP of a host computer, and then connect.
If this is so, a whole bunch of Dopers could play together sometime.
Just sayin’ is all.
I could be wrong, but I think you only get two Golden Ages per game.
Nah, the walkthrough above mentioned that theoretically you could have as many as you want, but it takes one more great person to proc one each time.
That walkthrough actually makes me want to buy the game. Too bad I’m kinda poor in both cash and free time.
Yeah, too bad most manual writers and “hint book” writers don’t have half the talen as Sulla for making things comprehensible and interesting.
-Joe
Don’t have much to add other than to share an anecdote (I’m still getting my butt kicked with only one win on Noble so far).
Anyhow, I start all my games randomly. So I’m doing my exploring and building up and then I figure we’re on Pangea or something since everybody seems to be on this continent. Then I notice that by looking on map in the corner that there is still a BUNCH of black to be explored. So I immediately think “Zoiks!!! There’s all sorts of undeveloped land in them thar fog o’ war areas.” I race to get a galley, load it up, send it across the sea, unload right next to a SIZE 8 BARBARIAN CITY. Nope, no old Civ III traditional lean-to barbarians, but rather a semi-civ that’s dug in like an Alabama tick. While I’m too busy trying to root them out, the “real” civs rolled into my homeland. Ah, the perils of colonialism.
You can do this, but early in the game, you’re better off building an academy or using them as specialists. Those extra shields, gold and research pay huge dividends by the end. Plus, they produce more great people later on if you use them this way. Late in the game, a great scientist is perfect for getting that crucial tech/
I just started another game as Queen Elizabeth of England. So far I’m in a pretty supply rich part of the map, but after exploring the area there’s alot of other Civs sharing the map and it’s already crowded with 2 cities each.
I was thinking about playing this game peacefully and shooting for the Space Race Victory (because of the Leader qualities I chose), but that might not work out.
So far I’m struggling to craft a strategy to maximize based on my Civ/Leader choice. I just don’t have everything memorized so when I’m asked build/research things I don’t always know which direction to go without digging up the chart, and that is sometimes too much info to digest.
Whew, to play this game right it takes some doing, eh?