how do i mp

[Dhalphir]

I think the most valuable experience for learning Civ would be attempting to recreate games played by experienced players up to a certain turn. this is a learning strategy I used when practising SC2 - I would take a replay of a progamer, and then try to replicate the build and compare my benchmarks at the 10:00 minute mark to his.

To my understanding, this can only be done in Civ IV if you procure the actual savegame from the player in question, so that your map AND random seed are the same, so that combat results work out the same. Even if combat results were different, this could still be incredibly valuable.

Picture this - somebody like Krill or Sullla (or anybody experienced, really, I don't know names much yet!) posts a savegame of a game on a given map. He posts a t0 save, a t50 save, and a t100 save. He plays through to t100 focusing entirely on safe, peaceful expansion. Not neglecting military, but not planning to rush or anything.

You take the t0 save and you play through it as best you can until t100. Then you load up the experienced player's t50 and t100 save and compare. How many cities? how many workers? Score? Power? GNP? Techs?

Then you look at where you fell down and see if you can figure out hoow to play better. Play the save again. Compare again. Keep practising until you can nail it. Then tackle a different savegame.

2-3 of those would improve anybody's civ skills by huge amounts.

Of course, this is predicated on finding a willing veteran to play a few saves up to t100, but that isn't an ENORMOUS time investment, and it could be massively beneficial.

[Jkaen]

Somebody a bit better can tell you the correct term, and point you in the right direction, but I would suggest maybe some type of 'best ball' game is what you could do with.

Everybody plays a turnset to an agreed point with the same save, then you compare which save is best and play a turnset from there.

That way you can see the approaches a better player took in the same situation you did.

You then have the chance or replaying that turnset yourself and seeing if you can match their result

[Sian]

the 'problem' with playing to benchmarks is that MP and SP doesn't reward the exact same types of playing as in MP its much more viable to be fast and is posible fork different locations, and is much more dependent on having enough units without overflowing to the point where you have to many, whereas in SP you can get away with slower, unitype stacks, and fewer defenders focused in a few key cities since you can tell from the beginning that the AI would attack from this or that angle ...

The best way would very likely be to read though some of the better spoiler threads (some of Commodores threads are great)

[Krill]

To be totally honest I wouldn't know a good, quick way of learning the basics. Personally, I absolutely do not rate any of the guides for how to play from any other forum: they are not designed to be used against opponents that think, which is a group that comprises of AI and gamespy players. The stuff that can be useful are the guides that explain mechanics, like the demographics screen, GP bulb paths and the like: that's raw data that you have to interpret to create a strategy.

I would say that the best ways to learn are to be a ded lurker to a good player that reports their games: that way you can ask why they do every single action that you don't understand. I think a problem with that is you've subbed into PB13, PB14 is a bad role model, PB15 is a niche game with weird settings (and modded), PB11 is a greens game. PB12 might be the best to ded lurker (Serdoa et al) but that game is actually getting on a bit now, entering the mid game. On top of that actually playing a game and reporting it is a good way to get advice from other players: Mardoc is getting a fair chunk of advice on why to make certain decisions in PBEM52 because of that.

As to "How to MP" playing PBEMs and PBs are best described as having a completely different mindset to any other game type. Military positioning matters, each player in the game needs to be able to judge exactly how much military they need to hold and to expand, it's a gradual build up, as opposed to the "Build an empire with no military, then slave everything into the ground for a huge stack" mentality. I think PB and PBEM games can be summed up that every single turn there are relevant decisions and it basically requires constant revision of the decisions you make, from the information you gain. You have to be competent in understanding what your opponents are going to do: without that understanding you can't create strategies to abuse their weaknesses.

That is all above and beyond the basic mechanics though. That just requires a shit ton of playing out multiple starts, multiple times. There are general rules you can learn though, like always move to a plains hill if you can keep your food resources, double whip workers out, when to finish granaries...

[Dhalphir]

it's the early game stuff I'm hoping to learn - that was mainly why I was considering asking a veteran player to run a start and then pass me the same save so I can attempt to emulate and match benchmarks. If you KNOW it's possible to hit certain benchmarks (because somebody else did it on the same map) you can learn with more confidence - every decision that brings you closer to benchmarks is the right decision.

I appreciate you taking the time to give your opinion, especially on PB/PBEM games

[Krill]

If it's the mechanics you want to practice, you would probably be best served by just replaying the starts from the PB/PBEM map thread and comparing them to what happened in the real games. But even then it's not really comparable that well past T40. The only way to experience that is through playing games, and TBH I think the knowledge and decision making about how to play T40-T80 is perhaps the biggest weakness of most players on RB.

[Ceiliazul]

some of the tournaments have been played by multiple folks. Look at those and compare results, see what they did different.

put a bug in brickAstley's ear about starting a new adventure, maybe? ask for saves at t50, t100.

[mackoti]

In MP its not that much about benchmarks, becasue if your neighbours start building units(you can see that on demographics) you must to do so,never a good ideea to asume that units are for somebody else.second never start with a strategy and not adapt to whats happening, you need to adapt turn by turn.
At the beggining find how far away oponest are and the decide what gambits you can take.Always first improve your food.

About ladder games thast totaly diferent 99% of time its same thinking, build loads of units atck someone.I played ther alot but i was realy satiesfied with Mp just when i found Rb Pbems.And thats the best way to learn play game report well and for sure i will be there to give advice.And very importonta to be ready to learn not like some players i tried to teach them some stuf but no way...

[WilliamLP]

You take the t0 save and you play through it as best you can until t100. Then you load up the experienced player's t50 and t100 save and compare. How many cities? how many workers? Score? Power? GNP? Techs?

This is a really good idea, but the tools for this are already there: Set up the map in worldbuilder based on screenshots, and see how well you can compare to their later screenshots. There are countless games and starts here you can do this with, and in some cases you are competing against moves that a really bright group of people took hours or days to come up with.

It's also obvious, maybe, but creating a sandbox map for every game, and playing the first 50-ish turns again and again with a lot of different variations has really helped me. All the time you realize things you should have done many turns earlier that would help you now, that were anything but obvious when you played one turn at a time.

I'm not one of the better players on this site, but if I were to tell a casual player how to improve: Build far more workers than you think, aim to never have a worker turn wasted, work far more food than you think (it's nearly impossible to have a city with too much food), aim to never have a city work an unimproved tile, and food tiles are far better than hammer tiles (a 3 food tile soundly beats a 4 hammer tile, simply for production from the whip). Granaries are the most important building in Civ IV and you should know how the mechanics work, e.g. try to finish them with the food box half full. And as Sullla says in his videos, knowing how to use slavery well is mandatory or you're playing extremely sub-optimally.

[SevenSpirits]

Plenty of good advice here, just want to add a bit more.

1) Look for completed PBEM/PB games with multiple team members discussing in the thread. In this case you'll see a lot of the mundane decision-making.

2) Look for games where they posted a micro spreadsheet. Figure out what it means and try to follow it yourself, in a single player game started from the game's original WBsave.

Also IMO the single player adventures are useless for learning this stuff.