So this is all right? I’ve been obsessed with grabbing either Hinduism, Buddhism or Judaism early on. So, not having a holy city is working?
This may be the issue. Tonight I’ll fire up one of those saved games and see if that is the issue. That seems to make sense. Thanks.
Whats the best way to do this? It can be tough to get your hands on missionaries early enough to convert them before they get established and discover one of their own. Plus it seems you have to choose techs for either spreading religion instead of war, which can be tempting fate.
Absolutely. A Holy City is great for the vision into other cities, and a Shrine is great for the money… but +4 with Ghengis and +4 with Toki is well worth the money I’m not getting.
It is unfortunate that it pours money into Toki’s pockets, as he has the shrine- but it gives me a largely safe border so that I can focus on fighting my other neighbors. Previously, when I shot to Christianity first (not hard to do when you build Stonehenge and get Moses), I would end up in nearly constant wars with my neighbors who hated my Christianity.
But remember that I play on medium Pangaeas. On Continents, or with larger maps, getting ones’ own religion may be much more worthwhile.
It’s not that tough- you just have to know how it works.
Cities without religion will usually grab the first religion that pressures them. Once they have a single religion, they usually have to be converted, though they’ll occasionally convert on their own.
If you start with a culture that has Mysticism, go for Monotheism as early as you can. This gives you two bonuses: you’ll likely pick up Hindiusm or Judaism, and you’ll be able to move to Organized Religion, which allows you to build Missionaries without Monasteries.
Since you have an early religion, you now have two vital goals. First, explore to find everyone else around. Second, get Writing. With Writing, offer “Open Borders” to everyone you’ve found. Open Borders means inter-city trade. Inter-city trade means you’ll have a chance of converting their cities to the religion of your cities. And if said neighbors haven’t founded their own religion, that means your religion has a huge chance of converting their cities.
If you don’t have Mysticism, get it and go for Monotheism, but you can be more leisurely- chances are, you’ll never get Hinduism or Judaism. Instead, push as hard as you can to get Stonehenge. That leads to a Great Prophet, and if you have Monotheism by the time you get him, chances are you can have him discover Theology and found Christianity. (Important note: By “get Monotheism”, in no way do I mean that you have to trade for it. As long as you’re going for Writing, you might as well go for Alphabet, and trade a bunch to get those religious techs.)
In this scenario, you’ll have to work harder at it- Christianity gets a free missionary by virtue of being a ‘late’ religion, but he’s probably better converting your capital or other larger cities. You’ll want to devote a city (or even two) to Missionary churning, possibly at the expense of libraries or commerce (though never at the expense of military- otherwise, you invite attack). Once again, get Open Borders, and be craven towards your neighbors when they make demands so that you can keep those Open Borders. Then, once your missionaries start pouring out, send them into enemy territory to convert their cities. (Just move into their cities and convert, just like you do your own.) Generally, once a civ has enough of his cities in a certain religion, they tend to flip over. Some cultures are also pre-disposed to certain religions, so I’d assume that European cultures are more easy to sway to Christianity.
Generally, though, if you want to convert the world, you need an early-Mysticism culture.
So in the first couple dozen turns, are you implying that you research nothing but religious techs and Writing? Even at the expense of putting off things like Archery, Animal Husbandry and Bronze Working?
This tends to be one of my issus I think, I tend to push hard for Hinduism (basically stealing that walkthroughs game plan) followed by trying to get animal husbandry/horseback riding.
The problem there is that once I’ve founded Hinduism very little happens religiously while I shift my attention to developing a military. I tend to not get missionaries for quite a while while I’m focused on growing my cities, building settlers and researching war techs. By the time I start trying to spread Hinduism, my neighbors all have Buddism, Judaism and sometimes even Confusianisms and Christianity in place are are stobborn to conversion. This past game I was planning on doing the opposite but I got overrun my Atzecs because the best military units I had was Warriors versus their Chariots. Alot of good that Holy City and Shrine did me.
Basically it seem like being myopic and soley going for religion is dangerous and uncertain, going just for military screws you in the midgame when you get dogpiled, going just for growth is OK as long as you’re not surrounded by warlike civs, and being unspecialized and sorta getting a little of everything (which is what the “recommended techs” tends to get you) will get you through, it will probably mean you have to settle for a time victory at best.
I swear I always do things in the worst order possible (both research and building).
My general guide:
Step 1: If you have Mysticism, go for Polytheism. If not, skip this step.
Step 2: If you have a lot of forest around your starting town, decide whether to go for Bronze Working early to chop down trees. If not enough forests, or not enough other production resources to be worth it, skip this step.
Step 3: Go for whatever techs you need to allow a worker to use the special resources around your starting town (Animal Husbandry, Agriculture, Mining, etc. Wheel if necessary to hook them up.)
Step 4: Archery to get Archers to better defend your cities.
Step 5: If I don’t have Mysticism, grab it now to build Stonehenge.
Step 6: Writing followed by Alphabet. Once you have Alphabet, you can trade with other civs for the missing techs.
I think the key here is Alphabet. I usually hit Writing and Alphabet well before my neighbors, and therefore can trade the hell out of all of the missing religious and military techs well before it becomes important.
I’ve been setting all my workers on full auto. Do you guys think that’s wise, or should I set them to do, say, trade networks only, or should I manually controll all of them?
You’re right, I screwed up in the telling of my story.
I put my explorer on a Caravel, and sent my settler and pikeman on the ship after that.
Well, just started another game on Random, got Washington/America, with the standard settings on Noble. Of course I screwed things up. Lost a early settler to a Barbarian. Wasted a good starting position (sharing a barbell shaped island with on one nation, and I was on the non-desert side) and let the other Civ get a leg up somehow. Researched all the wrong things. I’m hopeless.
One thing that sucks is that I swear the computer got a advantage somehow. I did everything I could to expand immediately, and somehow he had 4 cities before I had 2. There’s no way he could have build that many settlers in those few turns when I was only able to build 2. Supposedly Noble is the balanced level where there’s no built in disadvantages.
Cripes. Omniscient and I must never play a game. It’d be a horror show. I’ve got all the same problems here too, man.
Maybe I should stick to my twitch games. 
Woot woot, new high score of 39104, Augustus Caesar finish.
Now to follow the advice of Principal Skinner and to try to beat that record.
We should have an all pathetic game. It’d be 1956 and we’d be fighting wars with sticks and maces.
I used to put them all on auto and did okay, but recently I’ve been manually controlling all of them (until late in the game) and have found that I’ve been getting better results. In my experience, the automated workers love to chop down forests, which is something I like to have control over. The new patch (that is supposed to come out any time now) has “improved” worker AI, so perhaps automated will become a better choice.
Oh, that’s easy. The new scoring system doesn’t take into account your difficulty setting, number of opponents, etc. So just play against fewer enemies on an easier level 
And to conclude, I got attacked by Ceasar and Napoleon at once, and got overrun. Shocking. Though even though it was clear I’d lose, even if I survived the assult the game was unwinnable, I took morbid joy in digging in like a tick and watching Napoleon and Ceasar plummet from #1 and #2 in score to 2nd and 3rd to last as my Grenadiers took out their Cavalry, Artillery and Infantry.
Some day I’ll learn what the hell I’m doing wrong.
Update:
After all my crowing about Tokugawa being my friend, the SOB backstabbed me as soon as I loaded my save game last night. My army was completely on the other side of the continent, so he managed to kill off quite a few of my defenders and steal a city before my main force was back and able to fight him. In the end, and with Ghengis’ help, I managed to take that city back and steal one from him before he paid me for peace.
Twenty turns later, he declared on me again. But this time I was ready. Tanks, baby. Tanks with City Attack promotions. Against his Riflemen and SAM Infantry… he’s down two cities already, and I just got a Great Prophet, so it looks like I’m in the war until I take Kyoto and rebuild the Hindu Shrine… and pocket the proceeds for myself…
Omni:
Losing a settler is probably a lot of the reason you fell behind so quickly- settlers are about three times as expensive to build in Civ IV, and losing one early on can be crippling. Barbarians in Civ IV are not the rare, easily-beaten thugs of Civs II and III; they are nasty bastards who will spawn frequently and kill anything outside of your city radius.
When you say “I did everything I could to expand immediately”, what do you mean by that?
Oh, that’s a bunch of crap! They kept all of the multipliers and handicaps for your research and production based on difficulty setting, but did away with a multiplier for playing on harder levels?
Is there any reasoning behind that that you’re aware of?
lno, you were right about my religion problem. It was an issue with that 3:1 ratio. I may have to RTFM.
Just that I dedicated all my early builds to settlers and workers and built cities in as many high yield locals I could find from the outset.
When I saw that Rome and I shared a reasonably large continent to ourselves, and that I was on the resource rich side of a dumbell shape with a one square isthmus choke point, I tried to quickly dominate him with cities and units. Even though he was basically in the middle of a desert he still was able to expand cities AND dominate me in military units…either I’m realy missing something or I’m much worse at this than I realized.
Incidentally, I lost the settler after Rome had already gotten a leg up on me, so while it certainly put me at a disadvantage, it wasn’t the source behind my frustration with his obscenely fast expansion.
A big issue was that once I saw there was a bottleneck, I canceled open borders and fortified units at the choke point in hopes of keeping him isolated on the desert side of the landmass. However, I forgot that in Civ4, when at peace, units can pass through each other with or without open borders. If I’d been thinking I’d have built my second city on that choke point instead (even though it was comparably resource poor to where I chose) and it’d have forced him into either war or starvation.
Still, it seemed bogus that he was able to get a 4th city started (with defenders at all 4, and appaerntly not slowing his city growth) before I was able to build my 3rd settler.