Handing over the Throne

[Gaspar]

This makes me nostalgic to play a game of Vanilla Civ4.

[haphazard1]

This makes me nostalgic to play a game of Vanilla Civ4.

Me too! Just have to find that disc....

Lots of excellent advice given. Especially about more workers. I used to have the same problem of not building enough workers -- I always went for more buildings, more military, and never had enough workers. It really does make a big difference.

For raiding horse archers, spears/pikes are your easiest solution if you have metal to build them. You do need some roads so your slow-movers can reach the horse archers when they stop to pillage, but again more workers helps a lot with that.

Slavery is an extremely powerful civic. Learning to maximize food and then use the whip for production is very important. There are times you don't want to whip -- low food, heading into a golden age, need caste system to produce great people, etc. And later in the game drafting can be an alternate way to use excess food. But getting good value from the whip in the early game is a very good tool.

Good luck!

[TheSunIsDark]

I forgot to mention, you're in the last turn of golden age now, swap civics going forward if desired.

It's Vanilla, you can still get anarchy in GAs. Drafted redcoat army=instant win.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I forgot to mention, you're in the last turn of golden age now, swap civics going forward if desired.

It's Vanilla, you can still get anarchy in GAs. Drafted redcoat army=instant win.

Ha, been so long since I played vanilla I missed that one, guess I wasted a turn of golden age production. But yeah redcoats plus cannons at this stage is a roflstomp waiting to happen.

[Lord Parkin]

Ah, good old vanilla... 16 strength Redcoats and 18 strength Cossacks. Who wouldn't pick England and Russia in our games if that hadn't been changed?

[Bobchillingworth]

Don't forget Spain, with Knights which eat Pikes and get terrain bonuses


Oh, and the holy cities which gave permanent vision on anyone you managed to spread your faith to.

[Dp101]

Oh, and the holy cities which gave permanent vision on anyone you managed to spread your faith to.

That actually makes sense, in that pilgrims would tell people about their hometown at the holy city.

[Bobchillingworth]

Sure. You can just imagine all the priests and monks & whatnot listening intently and taking notes while they ask pilgrims stuff like "Excuse me, my son, but exactly how many Pikemen does your village have? Be precise, we need to be sure they're, uh, tithing correctly".

[Dp101]

Fair point.

[WilliamLP]

Fun thread, and awesome post from Xenu.

1. You only have 4 workers. Build more workers!

I think there are a few basic points that will drastically improve any newcomer to the game:

1. Food is everything. Every city needs a lot more than you probably think. A starting rule of thumb is that +6 food growth per turn is a number you should strive for, meaning you work 2 or more food resources. If you're like me when I started and every other newcomer I've seen you're not working this much food and not growing as fast as you could be. Every city wants a granary and sooner is better. It practically impossible to have too much food in a city in Civ 4. Even if you had like 5 corn, 3 fish, and a couple of pigs in your capital, you can find a way to use that to practically break the game later, trust me.

2. The goal to strive for is that cities should never work unimproved tiles past the very start.

3. Cities are also growing really quickly, so to support this, you're going to need way more workers than you're used to. More than one per city for sure. Do you have cities without +6 (or close) surplus? Improve food resources and build farms immediately. Are they growing onto tiles you haven't improved yet? That means you don't have enough workers.

I think with just this, you should be able to smoke everything up to Emperor.

Not as basic:

1. Get over the thought that overlap between cities is inefficient. It's very desirable, especially with food. A new city that can share food can start growing the first turn it exists instead of waiting for a worker to improve something. Sharing gives more options for switching tiles around later.

2. You need to learn to whip and chop effectively. Things you should never be shy about whipping and chopping are granaries, monuments or other culture buildings to claim resources, and workers and settlers.

3. Specialize your cities. Decide if a city is a commerce city or a production city at first and have some of each. Later, learn to specialize for the National Wonders, especially Heroic and National Epics. And if you're not stomping Noble yet, you could stand to build more cottages earlier. A lot more cottages. You should have at least a couple of cities or a few (ideally the capital is one) that are as big as they can get while working mostly cottages.

Have you watched Sullla's Youtube series where he plays the Dutch? If not I am pretty that a lot of what he does there will be revealing.